Chapter 1
It was Wednesday. 2:00 PM. Meaning he would be at the library.
Erik frequently assured himself that, no, his daily routine was not stalking. Not exactly. He didn’t mean for it to become a habit— following around the boy from down the hall, memorizing his schedule, and coincidentally ending up eating meals at the dining hall with him (separate tables, of course), revising at the library with him (at least 30 feet away, naturally), and relaxing on the quad with him (opposite ends of the green, assuredly)— but it certainly had.
In the fall semester, he was still getting used to life at school. He didn’t have many friends and he didn’t know what to do with himself half the time. It was sort of a crutch, following him around. Building his schedule around him . It gave him structure, Erik rationalized. And, after a few weeks, he knew his schedule like the back of his hand. Erik didn’t start to falter on his stance of his routine not being weird until he returned from winter break. The new semester meant everything changed. He had new classes. He ate at different times. Erik was lost. It was a little harder for him to rationalize learning his schedule again.
The first two weeks of the spring term were horrid. Erik couldn’t get anything done without his beloved structure. Apart from attending his lectures, he hardly left his room. Holed up in there, he ate at odd hours, ignoring his hunger in favor of staying in bed. He was never a very social person (he even paid extra for a single dorm, hating the idea of having to share his space with someone else, let alone a stranger), but he barely uttered a sentence to another living, breathing, person for weeks. Erik felt himself slipping. He knew the reason. The independent variable.
Body doubling! He had learned about it during the attention deficit disorders unit of his Introduction to Psychology class. That had to be it. He couldn’t keep himself accountable to stay on a consistent schedule himself, it was in good sense to simply pick a new, punctual, well-scheduled student and co-opt their schedule.
Week three of the spring semester, he tested out the waters with a girl in his Social Theory class. She was very eloquent and seemed nice enough, but she didn’t study enough for Erik’s liking. He needed a few more hours a week at the library. And she was on the volleyball team, and it would be just absurd to show up to the gymnasium during women’s volleyball practices. Trial 1 was unsuccessful.
Week four of the spring semester, he tried it out with a guy from his orchestra ensemble. They had an extracurricular in common, that was helpful. Yet, after a few days of studying his habits, Erik determined that he was going to the woods behind the art building in the middle of the night. Trial 2 was scrapped immediately.
By the fifth week, Erik was already behind on his assignments, having wasted incredible amounts of time memorizing two other students’ schedules. And worse, he was bored. So, so bored. It wasn’t like he was an incredibly riveting individual or anything, in fact, anyone with a routine as rigid as his was probably much stiffer and boring-er than a D1 volleyball player’s or a possible Satan worshiper’s. But, God, was he fun to observe.
At breakfast, he would always have two types of cereal in the same bowl. He mixed it up, from time to time, but always two. At the library, he would always take off his wristwatch and the necklace he kept hidden under his wooly sweaters, resting them on the table, and put on a hat. Indoors. He also inexplicably wore what Erik surmised to be reading glasses at the ripe age of 18. On the quad, he would rest on the slope of a hill with a thick textbook beneath his head, watching students walk by. Erik sometimes wondered if he watched someone the way Erik watched him .
Regardless, Erik needed to make a change and quickly.
During the sixth week of the spring term, it snowed. Erik loved the snow, and it was enough to motivate him to leave his dorm room outside of his normal hours. Outside of the dormitory, he watched students scrape up pathetic snowballs and pelt them at each other, howling wildly in fake anguish. It was nice to see people happy, even when he was not. One of the rowdiest yelped when a puny snowball hit him square in the face. Erik heard a quiet but sharp laugh to his right.
He was there, leaning against the wall, existing to Erik for the first time since their last day of finals last semester– their last time eating dinner “together.” The past six weeks, even though they lived on the same floor, they hadn’t passed each other by. He met Erik’s surprised look (one he didn’t hide quickly enough) with a smile, and rolled off the wall, walking back into the dormitory. Erik felt ill. He wondered if he smiled back at him .
That had to have been a sign, right? After months of matching schedules, it happened to line up organically for the first time? At this point, Erik didn’t care if he was grasping at straws, he missed his routine. Or well, his routine.
The next day, Erik returned to Trial 0.
Monday:
Breakfast at 8
Bioinformatics 9-10
Lunch at 12
Evolutionary Science 1-2
Library 2-6
Dinner at 6
Tuesday:
Breakfast at 9
Photography 10-1
Lunch at 1
Study in genetics building 2-3
Genetics 3-5
Library 5-7
Dinner at 7
Wednesday:
Breakfast at 8
Bioinformatics 9-10
Lunch at 12
Evolutionary Science 1-2
Library 2-6
Dinner at 6
Thursday:
Breakfast at 9
[Unknown]
Lunch at 1
Study in genetics building 2-3
Genetics 3-5
Library 5-7
Dinner at 7
Friday:
Breakfast at 8
Bioinformatics 9-10
Lunch at 12
Evolutionary Science 1-2
Library 2-6
Dinner at 6
Now, he was still workshopping this schedule. By the end of last term, he had his every waking move internalized, down to every smoke break, every study-break stroll. Again, not in a weird way. Well, no weirder than scheduling those types of things in the first place. Erik didn’t tag along for things like that. He was aware it might be a step too far into stalker territory, but the lines were blurry at this point.
By the end of week seven, Erik was rejuvenated. A new lease on life, in fact. He was catching up in his classes, gaining back the weight he lost from his unintentional hunger strike, and he just felt better. The familiarity of his habits, his cereal, the way he fussed with the hair at the nape of his neck while reading made Erik feel… regulated. At ease, for the first time in a while. It was hard to feel at ease at a time like this.
He was good at hiding his mutation. He had years of practice. While mutant rights issues were finally being treated with the care they deserved, it still wasn’t advantageous for Erik to be public about his abilities. He feared the scrutiny of academia, especially. He already felt like he was under a microscope, having his intellect questioned and his ideas criticized, that he didn’t think he could bear being further judged for something he couldn’t control.
He was magnetokinetic. He sometimes felt guiltily lucky to have an invisible mutation. Some of his friends from home didn’t have such a privilege, like the lovable misfit he took under his wing in childhood, Mortimer. With his green skin and Toad-ish features, he stood out whether he chose to or not. Erik took up a position as a defender early on their friendship. In the deepest pit of his heart, Erik stored hatred for the human children that bullied Mortimer relentlessly. He hated humanity, too. Sometimes, he hated himself for his silence in the face of mutant-oppression. His mother reassured him that he hid his identity for his own safety, but it didn’t make Erik feel any less dirty about it.
Being openly mutant would be dangerous in his field. He was working towards his bachelor’s degree in sociology, with a focus on social revolutions and activism. He felt it would be a bit too damning if he revealed he was a part of a group that held the stigma of planning to overthrow and decimate humanity. So he kept quiet. He didn’t have any friends at school to hide it from anyway. Change was happening outside the university, slowly but surely, and once he graduated, Erik would use his education and his identity to bring justice to all of mutant-kind.
But first, he needed to finish his damn poetry assignment for his writing credit course. And it was Wednesday. 2:00 PM. He had a standing appointment with his favorite seat in the library.
—————
He was sitting where he always sat, the third cubicle desk of a row of six flanked against a long window. By paying attention to his occasional lack of attention, Erik surmised he liked to watch the rain.
Erik set up his belongings on the other end of the room— he liked the comfy chairs more than the desk ones. He had his back to Erik, which was typically preferable. It made Erik feel less creepy that way. He had tried studying on a different floor of the library, but he found that the routine only worked if he could see him . So, he sits behind him .
While Erik pulled out his laptop, notebook, and noise canceling headphones (check, check, check), he watched him remove his wristwatch… then his necklace… and dig his gray beanie out of his backpack. Check, check, check. He was too far away to see the necklace, but the wristwatch was silver. He could feel the weight of the metal from across the room, and Erik understood how he couldn’t work with that weighing him down. The beanie however, remained a mystery.
Wednesday meant four hours at the library “together.” Erik turned on his music and began to work, occasionally looking up to make sure he was still there and when he knew— thought— he would take a smoke break. No smoke break today yet, though. Weird.
He had his head down on the desk, in his arms. Weird. Maybe he had a headache. It was hard for Erik to not be alarmed by slight changes in his behavior, since he was so scheduled, so disciplined, so perfect. He tried to put it out of his mind. He wondered if maybe he was asleep.
It wasn’t until a tall, broad guy started skulking around the room that Erik truly became concerned. He was an observer to his core, not just of him , so he had a good idea of the common cast of people to be at the library from 2-6 PM on a Wednesday. This guy was not one of them. In fact, he looked like he may have never stepped foot in a library in all his life. He was twitchy and on edge, surveying the whole room. Erik quickly looked away, avoiding the possibility of eye contact with the skulker. When he looked back up, his blood began to boil.
The skulker was reaching his hand out slowly, inching towards his watch on his table next to his possibly sleeping body. The watch was clearly valuable, he kept it clean and would lay it out nicely while he worked. It meant something to him . Erik froze while the skulker gently lifted it off the table, stuffed it in his back pocket, and walked away.
Erik was very strict with himself about using his abilities at school or in public. He only let himself manipulate metal in the privacy of his dorm room, and, even then, it was mainly to summon a fork to himself or move his metal chess pieces while playing himself. He made a point to never, ever do so in front of non-mutants. Nothing could be worth being found out. But this felt like it was.
Before he could second guess himself, he moved his hand suddenly but subtly, and slipped the wristwatch out from the skulker’s back pocket without alerting him. Sweet. Looking around anxiously at the handful of other students, all with their noses in their books, Erik levitated the watch back towards his desk carefully. Excruciatingly slowly, trying to avoid making the slightest sound, he lowered it down to the wood table. Because the world is cruel and Erik is undeserving of her mercy, he lifted his head from his arms and made direct eye contact with his floating wristwatch.
Fuck.
To make matters worse, Erik panicked and dropped the silver watch onto the table, making a clatter loud enough to break the sound barrier of the library.
Fuck.
Erik shoved his reddening face into his notebook before he had the chance to see him staring.
“Sorry,” he whispered apologetically to the startled students, his voice dripping in disbelief. Erik felt guilty hearing him apologize for something he did. He looked around the room in confusion, and Erik could feel his blue, blue eyes boring into him. He looked at anything, anywhere, but him . Erik realized a fate even worse than him figuring out it was him who moved this watch, thus determining his mutant abilities and outing him to the school: he could think Erik was trying to steal the watch.
Fuck.
It was only 4:30, but it was time for Erik to leave the library.
He packed up his belongings, forcing himself to do it as casually as possible, and walked down the stairs and out of the library. He barely had a foot out of the door when he had a cigarette between his lips and his lighter in his shaking hand. He slumped against a wall, winded.
How could he be so goddamn stupid? In the library of all places? Why did he have to get involved? He struggled to spark his lighter. His fingers burned from the cold. When he finally conjured a flame, he took a long drag, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back against the wall, not accounting for his lightheadedness and slamming it into the concrete.
“Ow.” He groaned.
“That’s got to hurt.” A voice spoke from his left. Erik knew the accent. There weren’t many English students at this university, he just happened to stalk— hang around one of them. He kept his eyes closed, humiliated.
“Felt great, actually.”
He chuckled softly. Probably out of pity. “Can I have a light?”
Erik opened his eyes to see him leaning with his shoulder on the wall, facing him with a cigarette between his fingers. He pulled the lighter from his pocket and passed it to him . Erik faced forward again, as if lighting a cigarette was a private affair that would be voyeuristic to watch.
“Cheers.” He flicked the lighter twice. Twice more. “Damnit.” Twice more. “Erik?”
Erik froze, praying he couldn’t see his shoulders tense at the sound of his name coming out of his mouth.
“Would you mind, um.” He laughed in a way that Erik could tell wasn’t at him, but in a good natured, humbly ridiculous way, “My fingers are freezing.”
“Oh. Yeah, yes, no problem.” Erik took the lighter from him and silently prayed to every God ever believed in that the lighter would be kind to his wounded ego.
Cigarette pursed between his lips, he leaned his face towards Erik. Oh. Erik put his own cigarette between his lips and cupped his free hand around the end of his cigarette. Flick. Crackle. Thank God.
“Cheers.” He rolled off his shoulder so his back was flat against the wall. Erik felt the gravitational presence of him next to him. He had tried to maintain a good distance between them for the past months, this was the closest they had ever been. Erik laughed internally a bit. He never realized he was nearly 6 inches shorter than him. Then he remembered. Feeling refreshingly but inexplicably bold, but not quite bold enough to turn to face him , he asked:
“How’d you know my name?”
“What’d you mean? We’ve lived on the same floor for months. We have door tags. Erik with a K.”
Erik was hit with a wave of embarrassment. He knew his name from simply associating his room with his face and Erik didn’t know his after months of stalking— routine co-opting.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I have a terrible memory.” Lie.
“Not a problem, my friend. Charles. Room 322. As in, Henry and Charles. From the… the aforementioned door tags. Or, well, he goes by Hank.” His — Charles’ — nonchalant tone was disarming. Erik’s nerve was recovering.
“Gotcha. Is it Hank and Chuck then? Or Charlie?”
“God, no,” Charles laughed, “What do you take me for?” He took a deep drag of his cigarette, and Erik followed suit.
“Should’ve known. Far too classy for that. I mean, look at that hat.” Erik joked, nodding towards Charles’ ratty studying-beanie.
“Respect the hat!” Charles patted his head, “He didn’t mean it.” He said to the hat.
Erik laughed through his nostrils and smiled at his feet. His cigarette was burnt out. He saw Charles pull out his wristwatch from his coat pocket, checking the time before stuffing it back in. Erik was glad he took it with him.
“Thanks for the light.” Charles put out his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe and flicked it into the trash can. He nodded towards the library, “Duty calls.”
“Yeah, anytime.” Erik said back.
“I’ll take you up on that.” Charles called while walking to the entrance without looking back.
Erik was glad he took his bag outside with him because there was no way in hell he could walk back into that library and sit behind the guy whose cigarette he just lit. Whom he had a conversation with. Erik couldn’t help but feel like everything was ruined. Just as he had regained his routine, his guide-of-sorts had taken notice of him. This would make hanging around him undetected much more difficult. He knew his— Charles’— name now, too. Now it was different.
Shaken and unsure of his emotions, Erik walked briskly back to his dormitory. He would have to finish his assignments from his room tonight. But once he got there, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but lay very still in bed, his mind full of thoughts but simultaneously empty.