Posted due to seeing this shit on my dash earlier:
I’ve been reading a lot of fanfiction lately for X-Men: First Class (like, seriously, it’s probably unhealthy), and one thing I see is a bit of wibblyness concerning exactly how long Erik and Charles knew each other. Some accounts go for only a few weeks, some for months, and honestly I blame some combination of writing, directing, and editing for this issue. Basically everything I think is only going to be ‘just’ fanon, but I wanted to bang out my reasoning for the timeline I use in my own fics.
Hellfire Club: Moira infiltrates the Hellfire Club likely somewhere between 1961 and February of 1962. Technically there were plans to put Jupiter Missiles in Turkey as early as 1961, however we’re given a timestamp to show that Erik’s time in Switzerland (and Argentina) is in 1962, so I settle for generally thinking the Hellfire Club material took place in 1962 as well. At this point I assume the CIA (or at least Moira) undertook a personal interest in discovering what was up with “sparkly dames” in order to corroborate her theory that General Hendrey was involved in shady dealings to get Jupiter Missiles into Turkey. She finds Charles soon after (likely March/April), although it is possible that Moira spent upwards of a *year* attempting to locate someone who might lend credibility to her observations of Emma and Azazel, it likely took at least a few weeks, there was no google to look up if anyone had recently written research on mutations giving superpowers. It is *possible* depending on the back story one wants to give Charles that an intelligence agency had their eye on Charles, he possibly was in the Army, or his research could have raised some eyebrows since we are talking about post WW2 when although eugenics was not polite conversation it was certainly something that merited attention. It is also possible that random scientists living in Europe were under slightly more intense scrutiny, domestic spying was a matter of course and if we assume Brian Xavier was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project I see no reason why his son wouldn’t have been (relatively) easy to locate within intelligence circles.
CIA Briefing/Miami Fight/Charles and Erik meet: Under no circumstances can this be later than May, and again could have been as early as Feb/March (why will become clear later) and it seems to take place in under 24 hours.
Cerebro usage/Bromance World Tour: All time after the CIA briefing through May. The kids seem to be *just* making their introductions when the compound is hit by Shaw, they do not know each other well, and although some friendships have obviously started to form it’s clear that there’s not nearly as much ‘team glue’ and the weight of the potential as CIA recruits has obviously not sunk in (cf: drunken carousing)
Russian Field Trip: May. Yeah, May. April 1962 finally saw some missiles being installed in Turkey and them making Russia nervous. The Russian decision to reciprocate with Cuban missiles came in May. Thus, Emma, who is traveling to Russian in order to have missiles show up in Cuba, must have done so no latter than May. This is when the CIA compound is destroyed, Angel defects to Shaw’s team, and Darwin is killed. The field trip itself could have taken as long as a week, maybe two. One does not simply walk into Mordor, nor do a fistful of CIA agents simply fly into Moscow with battle gear all ‘oh yeah, we’re tourists, taking in the Kremlin!’
Training Montage of Doom: May 1962 -> October 22, 1962. Mark this day on your calendar, because it’s the day of training dish sex. It is the day Kennedy gives the speech that the boys go upstairs to listen to after the ‘rage and serenity’ scene and memory unlock.
Cuban Missile Crisis Height: October 25, 1962 – October 28, 1962. Historically we record the 27th and 28th mostly as days bargaining the end of the crisis. The blockade in Cuba was tested on October 25th. I find either the 25th (more likely) or the 26th (acceptable but less likely) as the day of The Divorce.
Long Story Short: The Bromance World Tour was likely comparatively short. I find it unlikely that Charles and Erik met any earlier than about February, and they were in Russia and the CIA base destroyed no later than May, which leaves about 2-3 months max for using Cerebro, locating mutants, recruiting them, and bringing them into the CIA. The ‘mansion time’ however, despite Raven’s line of ‘look at what we’ve accomplished this last week’ should likely have been about five months. The comparatively short screen time spent on this time period (basically boiling it down to a 3-4 minute training montage and satellite dish sex) seriously undercuts the amount of time that the X-Men must have spent at the Xavier Mansion together.
All in all: Charles falls in love obscenely quickly, but it’s possible to fit a non-whirlwind romance into that time.
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