Proof that the remaining 10% is worth taking a bullet to the spine for here.
These are recommendations made by Tropers for X-Men: First Class fanfics, all of which have to be signed to stay on the page. Feel free to add a fanfic of your own to the list, but remember to use the template found here.
You can also add to the current recommendations if you want. Refrain from posting Conversation in the Main Page though; that goes in the discussion page.
All Along the Watchtower
by NezumiPi
- Recommended by: Half Born Hel
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Charles and Erik's complicated feelings are so feelingsy.
- Pairings: Charles/Erik
1 ReviewRumor Has It by blueink3
- Recommended by: rewindreplayrepeat
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Nearly six months after Cuba, Charles' life is turned upside down for the second time. Though he's slowly learning to adapt to the first, he's not sure he can handle the second. Luckily for him, there are a few people out there more than willing to help.
- Pairings: Charles/Erik
Excellent Judgment by cimorene
- Recommended by: rainbowdisease
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Modern, Human, College/University AU. Charles is a workaholic who owns a speed-dating business. Explicit content.
- Pairings: Charles/Erik
- Comments: Adorable, sexy, very in character and thought-provoking.
your head caught in a waking dream by addandsubtract
- Recommended by: rainbowdisease
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Charles is sent to a mental institution as a child and by the time Raven breaks him out, he's irreparably damaged.
- Pairings: Charles/Erik
- Comments: Gorgeous prose, heartrendingly insane Charles and fierce Raven and damaged Erik. Happy ending, however you look at it. Possible trigger warning for mental illness and/or mentioned violence.
Try, Try Again by and_backagain
- Recommended by: stardust_rain
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Erik is forced to repeat that day [on the beach] until he stops being an asshole.
- Pairing(s): Erik/Charles.
- Comments: response to a prompt in the kink meme. Poor Erik just can't seem to stop fucking everything up. It's so brimmed with emotions and helplessness, and Erik's frustration, desperation, and anger is phenomenal.
Fools Rush In by LoveSupreme
- Recommended by: Gevaisa
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Human AU set on a modern day college campus. Erik, a misanthropic cafe owner, falls in love with Professor Charles Xavier, a man with a lot of very familiar friends and a lot of ex-boyfriend baggage.
- Pairings: Male slash Erik/Charles
- Comments: What makes this fic stand out is that it's so well written and emasculates neither guy. There are lemons and it deserves its mature rating.
Nine Eleven Ten by Subtilior
- Trope page here
- Recommended by: Pippin Pips, Dexterfans 127
- Status: Dormant
- Synopsis: Author's Summary, Years later, Charles would remember that day. Sometimes he would wonder if he could have changed anything; other times he would despair over what he had since become. But he would always hold the image in his mind: Raven, laughing, and his thoughts flying alongside her on strong wings, silver-gold through the winter air. Once upon a time.
- Pairings: Erik/Charles
- Comments: This story is beautiful in it's precision, world building, and characters. Charles in this story is a BAMF and Erik, well Erik is interesting. I highly recommend this story.
Charlotte Francine Xavier by Blind Author
- Recommended by Tiggerific
- Status: Complete
- Summary: Genderswap, mature themes. Written for a kinkmeme prompt, looking at the events of the movie if Charles had been a woman. This story will also have the psychic-bond trope, as well as being a shameless fix-it fic.
- Pairing: Erik/always-a-girl-Charles
- Comments: Beautifully written. Charlotte is a believable Fem!Charles and Erik is in character, too. The mind-link is explained and isn't there just randomly, and even the "shameless fix-it" part makes sense in the universe. Highly recommended for anyone who loves genderswap fics (and even for those who don't, 'cause it's that freaking good).
Timeline series by Unforgotten
- Recommended by: stardust_rain
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: After Magneto of an X2-ish future succeeds in the unthinkable, Charles sends his consciousness back to 1962 to guide Erik away from the path that will lead to the genocide of the human race forty years hence. Charles knows that Erik has always loved him, and intends to use this knowledge + sex to seduce Erik away from his ideals in his youth. There's no way this well-thought-out, sensible, debugged and 100% bulletproof plan can possibly go wrong.
- Pairings: Charles/Erik
- Comments: The first fic is wonderful and funny and Charles is magnificent. The second is a Perspective Flip told from Erik's POV, which still brings the funny, but has some gorgeously bittersweet moments and makes your heart ache.
Humane Society by smilebackwards
- Recommended by: Risaga 54
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: Once Erik finally allows himself to decide that Charles is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread, he spends the next week being incredibly bitter that he's Charles' cat and not his boyfriend.
- Pairings: Charles/Erik
- Comments: Hilariously ridiculous and as funny as it sounds. Grumpy Cat!Erik is hilariously snarky and lovelorn.
The Usual Silence by interestinggin
- Reccommended by Turkish Van
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: "You have one unread message.
- From: avaaz.org
- Subject: Protect Your Fellow Humans
- Dear friends,
- In 24 hours, the United States Senate will vote on the truly barbaric Mutant Registration Act, a law requiring all mutants to register themselves as ‘sub-human’ or face deportation or imprisonment. The laws also allow the removal of many of their human rights, including the right to a fair trial, the right to protection from unlawful search or seizure, and the right to be protected from ‘cruel and unusual punishment’.
- In short, what this act could do is force mutated humans to carry registration or face the potential for torture."
- Take the path of least resistance. Stay safe. Don't speak up, if you're not one of them. What does it matter to you?"
- Comments: Just amazing. This fic really delved into the mob mentality of fear and prejudice and what happens when *normal* people don't speak up. How easy it is to fool oneself even if you don't have the excuse of the conflict unfolding a world away.The most amazing thing about this is the POV. It takes some skill to give us an OC AND YET still make the story interesting enough to keep the reader into the fic. This does that and this is coming from someone that pretty much hates most OC centered fics. There are few that pull it off this well. It's basically the definition of Burke's "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Even if by the end you see that narrator is anything but good.
Boden's Mate by kaydeefalls
- Recommended by: stardust_rain
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: X-men / Inception crossover/fusion
- Pairings: ensemble, with a side of Erik/Charles.
- Comments: ...holy Jesus Mary Joseph, this mind-blowing. It's halfway between a fandom-fusion fic and a crossover and the seams of the fandoms merge beautifully. The X-team are an extractor group, but references to the Inception world are delightfully name-dropped. Erik is the extractor, Raven the forger, Sean the architect, Alex the point man and Hank the chemist who works for Saito's company. Their mission is to extract something from Sebastian Shaw's mind. And Charles...Charles is the shade, the human manifest of guilt, lurking on the edges of Erik's mind. It had echoes and parallels to both Inception and X-men First Class, has a perfect world-building background and spot-on characterisation. Raven is so badass in this! It's very long, mind you, clocking at just under 80, 000 words and there's more to that series.
- Seconded to infinity. The way it blends the continuities (along with some clever original concepts) is just... holy cow. Be warned: you won't be able to concentrate on anything else until you've finished reading, but it's so worth it.
Hellfire by justkatherinetheokay
- Status: Dormant
- Synopsis: Charles Xavier comes from a long line of Watchers—longer even than the Fairweathers. In 1995, he was an eighteen-year-old genius child away at Oxford when his adoptive sister Raven, then the Slayer, and their father Brian, then her Watcher, were killed by a vampire. To add insult to injury, said vampire then sired Raven and vanished with her to Europe. In Los Angeles, Buffy Summers was called as the next Slayer, and the rest is history. Sort of. Once he finished his degrees Charles went looking for Raven, a quest that took years and spanned continents but ultimately came to nothing. After his mother, stepfather, and stepbrother were all killed in the explosion caused by the First Evil, Charles, now one of only a few Watchers left in the world, locked himself away in the Westchester mansion and welcomed the end of the world. Then it didn’t come. Charles has to take care of young new slayer Jean Grey with the help of Hank, Logan, and Erik, but first he has to get past his own pain.
- Pairings: eventually Charles/Erik
- Comments : Crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
