I've Been Thinking About Those Soulmate AUs Where Whatever Happens To Your Skin Translate's To Your Soulmates,

I need it so bad rn

Reblog the writers’ fortune cookie for luck!

Chapter 4 of my fic brought you the fish boyfriend, so I thought I'd do a quick little drawing to go with it<3

listen to me. *holds your face very softly between both of my hand* if you do not think charles should be able to read minds as freely as erik can control metal then fuck you very much. if you think it's ok for erik, or anyone else really, to express their mutation as much as they want but charles shouldn't then seriously eat shit. 'yea but it's so much more different-' ssshhhh. shut up.

Oh my…

You know, when it comes to the four Cherik actors, the old men walked so the young men could run.

We all give McAvoy and Fassbender the love they deserve, but honestly we wouldn’t have any onscreen Cherik at all if those two old Shakespeare vets hadn’t laid such a strong foundation a whole decade prior in the original trilogy.

Remember that Stewart and McKellen had no beach divorce to work off of. First Class wasn’t even a thought in any writer’s head yet when the OG trilogy was filmed. And yet they understood the assignment from day 1 - the “exes who never got over each other” vibes are just pouring off of both of them in every scene, especially from their eyes, starting from the very first moment Stewart’s jaw drops and his breathing stops as he sees McKellen in the shadows of the Congress crowd, and McKellen then manages to make a threatening line like “don’t get in my way” sound so … gentle. Be it outside Congress or in the plastic prison or outside Jean’s house, you can feel the weight of their shared history bearing down on them, a weight so palpable it’s on the verge of crushing them both every time they so much as lock eyes.

And you can see echoes of the young men Charles and Erik used to be in their performances … you can fill in the gaps with First Class details thanks to their level of nuance.

Every time they call each other “old friend,” you can hear the underlying emotions they haven’t figured out how to express aloud, and the hidden knowledge that those two words only scratch the surface of what they really are to each other.

Within Stewart’s heartbroken look in all of his closeups in their first scene on the Congress walkway in X1, you can see the yearning of a man remembering the first time this other man walked away from him and wishing he knew how to convince him to stay now, like he did then.

Within McKellen randomly name-dropping Charles throughout the trilogy (like when Sabretooth reports the X-Men knew about Rogue and when he’s headed to Alcatraz), you can hear the obsession of a guy embittered by years of opposition but with a secret piece of his heart still living in that moment when he first heard a beautiful voice in his head pulling him back from the darkness.

Within Stewart’s whispered “what’s happened to you?” at the sight of a bruised eye, you can see the grief of a man remembering the sense of a wave of horror and trauma pouring off someone down in the water, and now seeing that same someone has been abused again, and just like then, he wasn’t there to stop it, to protect Erik from getting hurt.

Within their suppressed smiles in the prison scenes and their repartee outside young Jean’s house, you can tell these two banged 40 years ago. You can feel faint echoes of the two guys who once sat on a bed showing off their powers and saying stuff like “more tea, vicar?” and “you’ve never looked more beautiful, darling.” (I even noticed that at the end of X1, in the “I will always be there” exchange, the camera placement leaves their hands out of frame, so they’re obviously touching each other’s arms in that moment but we can’t see exactly where - it makes me imagine that Charles briefly touched Erik’s hand before being wheeled away and that’s why Erik sits frozen for a moment before toppling his king. Again, it’s those actors’ nuances that give birth to these implications.)

Within McKellen’s facial expression of pure anguish and his scream of “CHARLES!” at Jean’s house, you can hear the soul being ripped from the body of a man whose life was, long ago, forever changed by the words “there’s so much more to you than you know, not just pain and anger … there’s good too, I felt it…”

You know two actors are at the top of their game when they’re able to convey the exact history of their two characters long before any actual prequels imprint that history in canon.

I do wonder if Stewart and McKellen watched First Class before they filmed Days of Future Past - it’s impossible to tell because regardless, they once again gave it their all, especially in the Rogue Cut. They took a little sentence “in other words, a door” and a little piece of direction to smirk and nod, and somehow made it one of the most flirtatious/erotic moments of the series. And then of course at the end, they gave us the most heartbreaking moment of the series and one of the top 10 most heartbreaking moments in any comic-book movie ever, period. You know the one.

I’m just so grateful to them for what they started. It all started with them. They knew what they were doing.

“What’s your favourite horror movie?”

Oh I don’t know, maybe the way Erik looked when he realised that his decades of trial and error did nothing to help him against Shaw, and he and everyone he loved would die a pointless death at the hands of the man he swore to never let hurt anyone else again…

I have like 5 million headcanons for the Hear Me Out au and I can't fit them all into the fic, so here we go, part one of character headcanons:

Charles:

He identifies as queer because he experiences romantic attraction and gender differently than others due to his telepathy (much more fluid). Generally he just uses male terms but he really just doesn't care all that much about pronouns.

he's nearsighted, and wears glasses.

he may not be able to figure out his own life, but he's got great advice for everyone else (and usually it works)

he's kind of been wanting to get his ears pierced for years but he's worried it'll clash with his academia aesthetic

If he's not wearing jumpers and button-ups he owns like five million oversized hoodies in varying colors

he collects converse

He likes classical music and pop and lofi

He just randomly has teabags all the time

Erik (sorry about his face idk what happened):

He generally respects people he'd just rather not talk to them.

Learned to cook and bake from Edie, it's become cathartic for him.

Knows how to paint and draw but will never tell anyone about it. He also makes sculptures from metal when he's bored.

Likes running and working out.

Angel:

Taylor swift girly to Raven's sabrina carpenter obsession (they've got all these records on their walls)

Does yoga and mountain biking

Makeup specialist of the house (since raven can just do it with her powers)

Will sometimes go flying with sean but he makes her nervous a lot because like, what if something happened to his suit?

Haunts the local starbucks

Raven:

Only wears gold jewelry and loves pink

Will kill anyone who hurts her friends (and they'll never find the body)

Has watched the sabrina carpenter christmas special like ten million times

does "natural makeup" tutorials for mutants with all different skin colors. People send her pictures of their mutation and she shifts into them, spends time making the look, and then posts it for them.

Sean:

Started to learn to cook when they all moved in together (just simple foods for now but he's getting better and really enjoys it)

Wayyyyy too much energy at any given moment

Has perfect pitch and is a great singer because of his mutation. He can also play any instrument by ear.

thinking about how Erik remembers this scene in first class differently to how it actually went (during xma)

i put the two clips together for comparison (apologies for the bad transition between them i honestly don’t care about fixing it rn)

HELLO?? 😭😭

damn i guess Erik wants to feel needed. especially from Charles 🤨

omg why is he so gay… YOUR WIFE AND DAUGHTER DIED LIKE TWO DAYS AGO???

the gay tear….

How am I supposed to tell my mother that I'm not smiling over a conversation with a hypothetical boyfriend but over a fanfiction about a stupid hunter and his stupid angel ?

I didn’t planned to cry but here we are 🥲

I've been thinking about the Paris Proposal lately.

I love it so much. In a time when Charles is so vulnerable and alone- Raven is dead, Jean is gone(?), he lost his place as headmaster of the school and leader of the x-men, and surely he assumes he's lost Erik long ago- Erik shows up and is so soft and gentle.

The best part? This line:

Throughout the series but particularly in Dark Phoenix, everyone that Charles loves interprets his intentions in the worst possible light. This movie is like, one long Charles whump; Raven accuses him of hiding in the mansion and taking the credit for the x-men's success, Hank cruelly blames him for Raven's death and turns on him after thirty years of friendship, and even Erik gets his licks in ("You're always sorry...but nobody cares anymore"!? ERIK!!!)

But then Erik shows up in Paris, and says "You saved my life, and you offered me a home."

I'm certain that in First Class, Erik didn't see it that way. Instead, he saw Charles making ultimatums and rejecting Erik entirely the moment Erik did something Charles didn't agree with (and we can all agree Charles didn't handle things well on that beach, but the truth is that he always, always forgives Erik and he always wants him back, even when he's upset with him)

Sometime over the last thirty years, Erik has reevaluated that time and come to the conclusion that- yes, Charles was offering him a home-not just a place to sleep and train and plot.

A home.

Somewhere you return to at the end of every day, regardless of what that day brought and whether you were the best or worst version of yourself, somewhere safe and accepting and loving.

After Charles has lost everything he cares about and is told he's selfish and dangerous and always has been, Erik shows up to convince him otherwise.

"You saved my life, and you offered me a home. I'd like to do the same for you."

Which, given all that context, sounds a lot like:

Two people with decades of grief and pain and anger between them seeing the love and good in each other at the end of it all.

Absolutely beautiful.