ROUND ONE: Unfilled and Overflow
ROUND ONE
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OVERFLOW AND UNFILLED PROMPTS POST
DO NOT post prompts here. This is NOT an active Round.
DO NOT post Fills or Updates here if they AREN'T for Round One prompts.
If you want to CONTINUE UPDATING a WIP:1) Make a new comment, copy the original prompt's Subject Line (add any pairings, kinks and warnings that may be missing) followed by ( Read more... )
Erik's fever comes and goes: the playful banter slides into hallucinations that crumble into tears.
Charles keeps the boys away, refusing to let them see Erik so vulnerable, and runs himself ragged as he feeds Erik pills and broth, wipes him down, changes the blankets.
(When this is over, he's sure he'll be sick but right now, there's no one else Charles trusts with Erik.)
V.
"I can't lift you, Erik, you have to stand," Charles tells him. "You have to stand."
"I want to sleep."
"I know and you can - once we've gotten you bathed, all right?"
Erik rolls to the side and sits up, coughing hard as he reaches out for the bed post and pulls himself up, to his feet. That is as far as he makes it and says, once he's stopped coughing, "Change the sheets?"
"Yes, we will. Once we've gotten you bathed." Frowning, Charles brushes his mind against Erik's fevered one and tells him, Think about how good it'll feel to not be sticky, Erik. Nice cool water on your skin and then some clean sheets...
Erik blinks and looks through a fringe of sweat-plastered hair, flicks his eyes to the bathroom doorway and then to his legs. It seems to take everything in him to speak and he surprises Charles when he admits, "Could you get Hank?"
Charles supposes it took a great deal out of Erik's pride to ask for help and he quickly calls Hank into the room from his station outside the door. He watches as Hank slowly maneuvers Erik from the bedroom to the ensuite and thanks him once Erik is in the tub, water cresting his knees and no further; he asks Hank to change the sheets, then closes the bathroom door and sets to work.
"This is good," Erik mumbles a little while later, leaning forward so Charles can drop cupfuls of water down his back.
"I thought you'd like it. Nothing better when you're feeling rotten than cleaning off the sick." Charles reaches for the cloth he'd dropped into the tub and pulls it up, brushing by Erik's thigh. (If this was months ago, Erik would have pulled Charles into the tub, kissed him, but this is here and now and instead, Erik sits there looking miserably sick yet content as Charles wipes at his face.)
There's silence after that, broken only by the lapping water.
VI.
Erik's hallucinations and his fever reach their pinnacle a day later, and he asks, "Is this still home?" before launching into a coughing fit.
VII.
"Charles," Erik mumbles a few nights later, laying in Charles' bed and able to recognize that fact. His fever is gone, been gone for a while, and his foot is no longer aching though he knows it's still healing; he's not coughing as horrendously as he has been. He feels tremendously better and he knows (as Charles knows) that it is only a matter of time before he leaves the Mansion.
Goes back to the Brotherhood. (The Brotherhood whom Erik hadn't trusted to care for him while he was ill and injured and what does that say about the people he's chosen to be at his side?) Goes back to trying to survive and thrive in this world that fears him and their kind.
He knows it bothers Charles, the intimation that things will eventually go back as they were. Things have certainly been... different while they'd been in this bubble of reality, but it cannot last.
Charles murmurs, "Erik," and waits.
Neither looks at the other.
The question is as softly spoken as it was days ago, this time unfettered by the fever that had caused Charles to brush it off the first time: "Is this still home?"
"Always, Erik."
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