AN: Hey there! I'm still rather new to ffn and just fic in general, so I hope you like this! It's just a short drabbley piece, but all the same, reviews are appreciated!

Charles learned what love looks like on a windy autumn day at the park around the corner from the pretentious boarding school his stepfather had shipped him off to for the year. A confused adolescent, bitter with his sense of self and I'm not like them in more ways than one, ways that involve blushing girls and heavy-lidded gazes, he sits himself on a bench after morning classes and half-heartedly searches for an answer.

(Charles still isn't quite sure what the question was.)

Charles sits. He sits and he seethes and he chews on his lip, but most of all, he watches and he listens and he sees.

A boy and a girl playing tag, weaving through trees as their laughter rises towards the sky. The exchange is like newly turned soil, fresh and wet and ready for a seed. A teenage couple, holding hands as they come through the south entrance. One gaze is giddy, edged with the flutter of a butterfly's wings. The other burns, intentions tainted with a dark instinct that sneers at tame flirting and chaste kisses. A woman walking her dog, stopping to admire the shades of the leaves. She views the world on a black and white reel as the nostalgia of childhood creeps into her periphery.

No one realizes that their eyes, their windows to the world, can tell Charles everything he needs to know about their state of mind. He sighs into the wood of the bench, bored and smug with omnipotence. All these thoughts, stories, memories buzzing around him, yet what could they offer? What could they show Charles that he had never seen before in the minds of others?

("I was young then," Charles remembers later. "Too young.")

The couple enters his radius of thoughtsfeelingsmindsbefore entering his line of sight, a presence enough to keep him from burrowing into the cynical folds of his own psyche. The way his body tunes into the signal is a bit disconcerting, warranting attention. It's a foreign discomfort, but not unpleasant, not unwelcome.

Curls drip into Charles' eyes as he fights for a visual, twisting and pausing when he sees wrinkled skin and soft joints, brittle bones and white hair. His lips twitch, but not in skepticism. Instead, Charles feels a small smile grow, following the quaint elderly couple with his eyes as they move through the park.

There's something in the air around them, a projection that carries its glow and its softness all the way over to the lone teenager sitting in the cold. And like an arctic gust of wind, Charles is hit with fascination and the desire to understand.

His tendrils creep up slowly, not entirely deft, but with the most finesse a near two decades of practice can muster. One more nudge and -there. His eyes are not his own.

("The first time I was truly someone else," Charles' voice grows fond, "I could never forget that." But the fact that it was his first is not why he remembers.)

He is Robert Fields. He is a war veteran from Iowa who went on leave in the big city 36 years ago with $9 in his pocket and 48 hours on his watch. He is the man who held a pretty girl underneath a streetlight, whispering how he'd be back with a ring once Europe was pieced together and the men in suits told him he could come home. He is the soldier who lived through the brutal warfare and would not accredit his survival to his own skills or those of his comrades, but rather a weathered photograph he kept in his breast pocket and kissed every night before a few lone hours of cherished sleep.

None of this is important to Robert at the moment, though. What he values most is the hand he's cradling in his own as he walks through the park, the one sporting the ring he bought with his first paycheck when he stepped off the boat.

So Charles, as disoriented as he is to be in the creaking body of a man more than three times his age, draws watery eyes up from the pavement to look at his companion. What he finds threatens to bring him to his knees.

Irene Meid, born April 17th, 1897. Blue eyes, blonde hair, though her sister hallmarked the shade as "strawberry-kissed sunlight" during a game of hopscotch in the second grade. Loves daisies, hates tulips. Grew up on the shop floor of a hardware store that'd been in her family for years. Had her heart broken at the school dance when twelve year old Jimmy Thompson wouldn't dance with her because her ears were too big. Had it broken again when a ruggedly handsome soldier said goodbye to her under a streetlight six years later. Let him put it back together with a ring and a promise at the end of the war.

Charles hears and sees all the facts at once, truths ringing in his ears as he pieces a vision into reality. The young woman standing under the dim light, wrapped in his arms so many years ago, is the one at his side. So is the softened older woman, white locks framing the exact same blue eyes with an adoring, if not crinkled, smile. But the physical, that's not all Charles sees.

Between the young and the old, every Irene that ever was and ever will be contained in one glimpse of the woman, there is something else. It's something that fades when Charles turns away, looks at the passing flowers or a man and woman jogging by. It's something that only fires up when Robert's attention is focused on Irene's laugh, the way the sun brightens her face, the feel of her skin on his. There's a filter on his vision, one filled with white light and warmth and a stirring rhythm deep in his chest. Robert's eyes tell Charles a different story. A new story, one that sends his mind reeling. He is thrilled and frightened in the same breathe.

And then Charles pulls back.

(There's a chuckle. "Surprised I managed that at all." Charles covers his face. The sound dies. "Glad I did.")

No longer is he a war hero with a wife and seven grandchildren and a house with a wraparound porch. He is Charles Xavier, lonely sod stuck on a park bench in the middle of fall, running fingers through hair that's grown long without a stepfather to shame him to the barber or a drunken mother to look down her nose at the unkempt appearance.

Yes, he is Charles Xavier, a smug, lonely sod. But Robert, Robert gave him opportunity, lent Charles a frustratingly beautiful experience that ran unparalleled to anything the teenager had ever felt before. And that, that wonder would grate on him until he could decipher that filter, the one with the white light and the warmth and the thumping in his chest.

Charles leans his head against the bench, opening his face to the sun as wind picks up and dances with lost strands of his hair. A clean blue sky stares back at him, no cloud daring to distract. Lip between teeth, Charles closes his eyes, then opens them. He looks and thinks and ponders but cannot put a name to what he felt. Not until the part of his brain that paid attention in his English Literature course kicks in, pulling just enough from a lesson on the Romantics to whisper "This, this is what Shelley and Byron and Keats spent lifetimes trying to capture, to verbalize, to put down on paper for all of humanity. This is a red, red rose, a sonnet, a bright star. This is what those foreign lines of rhythmic patterns were screaming at you when you found yourself deaf. This is what you've been waiting for," does Charles find an explanation for what Robert showed him that day.

(That's what he'd told himself after the fact, though. Waxing poetics, quite literally, trying to put the impossible into coherency. In that moment, it had just been a single word that seared itself into his flesh. Love.)

Instead of a wooden bench, there's a cool metal wheelchair now. It's still autumn, although Charles forgoes the hassle of venturing to the park to admire the leaves. There's plenty of color around the Xavier estate, if only one knows where to look.

This is where Erik finds him, alone on a patio off the south wing, noting the depths of the oranges and reds the maples are offering. Charles feels the silence more than hears it, starting conversation without turning.

"I don't think I could ever tire of the fall. The view alone," Charles gives a vague gesture to the treeline. "It's splendid," he keeps his voice even, stable, covering an old crack that's never quite filled in. There are footsteps, and soon a shadow is by his side, towering over him. Completely at ease, Charles keeps his eyes trained on the yard, ignoring the burning gaze that falls on him.

"Yes," Erik's reply is solid if not rough. The weight of his stare seems to fade reluctantly, ripping from the telepath's face to glance at the colors. "It is."

And that's when Charles' resolve breaks. He pulls his eyes from the warm tones in front of him and chances a look at the man to his left.

Erik Lehnsherr. Born September 5th, 1929. Almost brown hair, almost blue eyes, though Hank and Alex agreed on green and Raven argued for a particularly odd shade of grey. Loves Sinatra, hates whatever record Sean left on the turntable. Spent half of his childhood sitting at his mother's feet, learning how to bake challah. Spent the rest of his life wishing he could have that back. Had his heart broken at the age of twelve by Sebastian Shaw, all because he couldn't move a small piece of metal. Had it broken again twenty years later, because he didn't stop a small piece of metal. Wouldn'tlet anyone put it back together, even though Charles tried.

Looking at that profile, even with the godforsaken helmet marring Erik's lovely face, Charles feels something. Something that goes away when his eyes scan the stone railing or the dying flower beds. Something that burns when he focuses his attention on the way the sun tickles Erik's nose, the wind kissing Erik's eyelashes, the man's tight grip on the back of Charles' wheelchair.

And there's a white light.

With a consuming warmth.

And some odd, unbridled stirring deep in Charles' chest.