"Do You Love Me" 3/? (XMFC Charles/Erik AU)
Title: Do You Love Me
Word Count: 5,500 (Chapter) - 11,000 (Whole Fic)
Pairings: Charles/Erik, Raven/Hank, Sean/Moira, Scott/Jean, very brief Raven/Azazel
Rating: PG-13 (More R this chapter, for one part)
Summary: Charles and Erik have been married for 25 years, thrown together by a mandatory post-apocalyptic pairing system attempting to increase and strengthen the population. They have seven children. They have never spoken of love, but change is on the horizon.
Warnings: mpreg, underaged characters for part of it but in their society they're adults, and it's a bit of a dystopia but with a happy ending
Thirteen Years Ago
"Charles…"
Charles is washing dishes when he hears his sister's voice behind him, and at the distress in her voice and in her mind he turns quickly and find her in the open front doorway of the house.
She hadn't knocked. She doesn't need to. This was her home until last year, when she turned eighteen and moved to the young women's boarding house.
"Raven!" Charles drops everything, dries his hands on his trousers and goes to her quickly. She is trying not to lean on the doorknob, and he pulls her gently away from the door and shuts it behind her before pulling her into his arms. "Are you all right? What happened? He didn't hurt you, did he?"
Raven is nineteen now. The population has grown enough that the elders feel comfortable allowing the pairing system to wait until the young people are seventeen or eighteen now, before matching them, and she should have been matched a year or more ago. But as a shapeshifter her DNA is different even from that of most other mutants, and there was trouble finding a suitable partner for her.
There were two or three young men in town who would have been suitable enough, genetically, but they weren't happy enough with that. They didn't pair her with any of them.
"No…" Raven is saying against his shoulder. "I'm fine, I just…he's gone. And I couldn't stay in that godawful boarding house one more second…" Not that the conditions are awful. They're fine. He's seen the boarding houses and apartments for the young people, and they're comfortable enough, as anything can be these days. But he can feel that she simply wanted to be home.
The children are playing upstairs, all five of them, and Charles glances up and hears their footsteps pounding overhead. They could come down here at any time.
"Come here," he says gently, and leads her into the bedroom and shuts the door behind them. Raven sinks onto the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around herself.
"Why won't he just…I don't care if he's never here. He could still marry me. Then at least I would be married and I wouldn't feel like…like some sort of cast-off. I know I'm not the only one, but…" She looks up at him dejectedly, and Charles swallows and sits beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"I grew up here," she says quietly. "I watched you and Erik…I mean, if nothing else you two get along. He wanted to marry you and he cares enough that he's not sorry he did, and he cares about the kids. He's taking just as much responsibility raising them…I wanted that."
There was one possibility that was better, genetically, than the two or three other possible matches for her that there were. A teleporter that had first come here a few years ago, bringing them what little information they did have about the rest of the world and how it was coping and recovering. He was here sometimes, and sometimes he was here for a while, but often he was not here at all. He was not officially part of the town. He was not subject to the pairing system.
But it had been discovered that his genetic makeup was much more compatible with Raven's than anyone else, and without consulting her at all, of course, the leaders of the assignment department had asked him to pair with her.
Not to marry her. Not to stay. Just to mate with her.
And he had agreed to that, just to that, and reluctantly. Charles was furious. He is still furious. But he won't show it in front of her. Not now. That isn't what she needs now.
Charles blinks back tears and pulls her closer, kissing the side of her head. "I know. I know…I'm so sorry."
This has to stop. They can't keep doing this to them. To people like his sister. Maybe they need a larger population. Maybe they need stronger individuals to help avoid extinction with the radiation that's still present outside the cities. Maybe this is, to some extent, necessary.
But that doesn't mean that emotions no longer exist. That doesn't mean that the young people being rejected by their partners are not hurt by it. Even many of those who are married are not content.
"Mom? Mom?" Footsteps on the stairs, out in the main part of the house, and in a moment the bedroom door opens and a curious head pokes inside. "Mom, where are y-oh. Sorry."
"What is it, Hank?" Henry is the oldest, nearly eleven now.
Charles's arm had fallen from her shoulder and Raven has straightened. She smiles at the boy in the doorway. "Hey, you."
Hank smiles brightly. "Hi, Raven." He has a ridiculously obvious crush on the older girl, nursed for years while they grew up as friends under the same roof. He has always admired her, looked up to her. Raven is fond of him, too, if not in the same way. Not now, anyway. Hank is still too young. They are not related by blood, so it isn't so strange either way, but it doesn't matter now.
Raven's been paired.
Hank looks at Charles then, and shrugs a little, sheepishly. "Ororo got mad again. There's a cloud in the corner. We need the mop…"
Ororo is three and prone to temper tantrums. Her emerging powers can be a bit of a nuisance, but he isn't worried about her. He can tell already that she's going to be bright. She'll learn to control her powers soon enough.
Charles's eyebrows knit together. "I'll be up in a moment."
"Okay." Hank glances at Raven again, smiles once more, and is gone.
When they're alone again, Raven lets out a heavy breath. "Can I stay here for a while?" she asks weakly.
Charles looks at her again, and squeezes her hand. "Of course. Your bed is still upstairs, and you will always be welcome here anyhow."
He and Erik and those like them are lucky, and he knows it.
Twenty-Five Years Ago
They only explained some of it to him, before he and Raven came here. Enough that he would know what to do. It's going to be different for him and Erik, than for the other couples.
They told Charles that besides having everything a normal male would, he has everything else inside that a female would need, to conceive and carry a child. But nothing on the outside. Of course, because he would have noticed by now if that were so. From his DNA they determined that the mutation has allowed for him be designed different, on the inside, besides the extra organs that are there. There should be a way, they told him, for fertilization to take place if he has intercourse with a male the only way two men can. A passageway that isn't there in normal males, to the womb other men don't, of course, have.
Of course, before that they had to explain how things work normally. Just trying to survive for the ten years since the war began, he'd had no time for physical relations. No one had ever explained them to him. Only vague comments from those older had given him any idea at all about any of it before the scientists and doctors back in the other town explained it to him before he left. And explained how it was different for him.
The mutation isn't perfect. It's secondary, and not all secondary mutations are. With none of the outward characteristics a female would have he cannot give birth in the usual way, and they're relatively certain he will not have milk for the children, either. If he conceives the children will have to be taken surgically to be born at all, and the department will arrange for a wet nurse.
Charles has wondered, since then, what the point of it all is. Why they paired him with a man when having children is going to be more trouble for him than for the girls. He is still perfectly capable of fathering children; why can't he do that? They told him he would be more valuable this way, but he doesn't understand how.
But many of the doubts and fears melt into the background as Erik takes him. He doesn't know how much of the specifics Erik knows, but they must have told him enough. He knows what to do, and how to prepare Charles to make it easier, and he does it as gently as he can. As respectfully as he can.
Charles is grateful for that, knows that he'll be all right if Erik is really as concerned about it as he senses from him, but it still hurts. They told him it would, at least in the beginning. Until he's more used it. Until they're both better at it. Right now it's clumsy and awkward, neither of them entirely sure they're doing this right even though they're doing exactly what they were told to do.
Erik has never been with anyone either.
Erik asks him more than once if he's all right. Charles clutches at the sheets and nods, telling himself it doesn't hurt so much as it's strange. But he can sense that Erik doesn't believe him, and finally he has to put it into words.
"It's all right. It's…it will get better. I'm all right."
But it hurts. It really does. Once he cries out before he can stop himself and they both freeze, Charles's fingers going quickly to his temple. Raven is still asleep. She didn't hear anything. If she had he would have erased it.
"Raven…?" Erik asks.
"Asleep," he confirms quietly. It makes him indescribably happy that this man who has just met them is also concerned for his sister. He doesn't think he could be with anyone who would treat her with any less care.
"Charles…" Erik says, a bit unevenly. "Are you sure…? Maybe we shouldn't…we can try again later." Erik doesn't want to be hurting him. But he was close before the interruption and his eyes are dark with need, and everything they discussed before this began is still relevant.
"I doubt it would be any different later," Charles answers.
Erik begins again, and as it goes on it does, finally, become a bit easier to handle. He can tell that they were right; at some point it won't hurt so much. He's still not certain he believes he'll ever get any pleasure from it, but only time will tell.
Erik finishes, clutching at him tightly to ride it out, and Charles lets out a breath and is finally able to relax. Erik rolls off of him and Charles rolls onto his back, both of them catching their breath.
"Are you all right?" Erik asks yet again.
Moving told him how sore he is, and Charles winces. "I will be. It's all right." Erik is looking at him regretfully, and Charles wishes he wouldn't. It isn't his fault. He did everything he could to make this easier.
When Erik reaches out Charles isn't sure, at first, what he's doing. "Here, let me…" He looks at Charles questioningly, and Charles doesn't understand at first, but then he realizes that he's hard. Between the ache in his muscles and trying to keep Erik from feeling so guilty all this time, he'd hardly noticed. Or he had, but he'd pushed it to the back of his mind.
"You don't have to…" Charles frowns. But he isn't saying no.
"It should help," Erik murmurs, and he slides closer again. He takes Charles in his hands, strokes him rhythmically. This, too, is something he isn't completely familiar with, though this, at least, he knew of before-pleasure, discovered by accident, as he supposes it probably happens for most. But there was never time for this, either. He hasn't experienced it often, and when Erik brings him to climax it's more intense than anything he's ever achieved on his own. Much better. He has to clench his jaw tightly shut to keep quiet, and his hands fist in the sheets again.
Charles is still trembling a little, catching his breath again when Erik moves away for a moment and comes back with a towel from under the bed and cleans them both off.
"Do you feel better?" he asks hopefully.
"Yes, actually," he whispers, calming himself to stillness and sighing, more easily now. The ache is receding, much more manageable now. "Thank you." It wasn't necessary. It was only necessary that Erik come inside him, but Erik did it anyway. For him. "Thank you."
"It's the least I can do…I shouldn't be the only one getting anything out of this," Erik says quietly. "Especially not when…when it hurts you…" There's so much pain, not in his voice, but in his mind, that Charles looks at him quickly.
"It didn't hurt so much in the end. It really was getting better. I'm sure it will improve more in the future. And I'm all right, Erik, really." The name feels right, somehow, rolling off his tongue.
"You're sure?"
"I have a feeling I may grow tired of hearing that…"
And the older man still doesn't smile, not exactly. He won't let his walls down quite that much. Not yet. But one corner of his mouth twitches, just for a second, before he sits up to pull the blankets from the foot of the bed over them.
And Erik is quiet again, and they sleep on opposite sides of the bed. Charles tries to push down the small part of him that feels hurt by that, because he expected it. They've just met each other. They've done what is expected of them, and he shouldn't expect anything more. Not now, at least. Not until they know each other better. And it seems as if Erik isn't the particularly affectionate sort as it is.
But he's kind. He has a good heart. That should be enough for Charles to be content enough, tied to him. Certainly in this world, where he might not have had even that.
Charles hopes it will be enough.
The next morning when he wakes there is quite a bit of light streaming through the curtains of the one window in the room, and he isn't sure how late it is but he's certain he should have been awake by now.
But Erik hasn't disturbed him. Erik, actually, is near the window, looking at Charles's things on the shelf curiously.
He pushes himself up on his elbows. "Erik?"
Erik glances at him. "You have books of your own." Not mentioning last night, which is all right, though Charles can still sense the concern beneath the surface.
"Yes…I do." There are only a few-only what he could carry in the bag, before he and Raven settled in the other town and they were wandering with others, trying to find a place to call home. He found the books in various places-took the ones that were less damaged that he found interesting.
Maybe he was only five when the war began, but he was beginning to read then, and since then he has gathered the rest of the skills he needs to do it from others' minds. He has always felt a bit guilty about that, but when just trying to survive no one was going to take the time to finish teaching him.
And Charles wanted to know how. That, and he's discovered that reading is an escape-fiction, especially-from the world they live in now.
"I like reading," Charles fills in. "I know it's important, too. I've been trying to teach Raven. She's bright, and she's learning, but she doesn't like to sit still."
Erik raises his eyebrows, and the corner of his mouth twitches like it did last night. "So you're smart."
"I don't know if I would say that."
"I would. Most people don't care about books anymore. It's the older survivors trying to collect them. It's good that you care, too. It means you understand, like you said, that we can't let things like that be lost completely. That's intelligent." Erik sighs. "We need more intelligence around here."
Charles smiles at him, even more sure now that, somehow, they can make this work.
Now
Not long after Jean leaves the front door swings open again. Charles glances back briefly, expecting to see Bobby and Kitty and Marie flying inside and up the stairs, but instead it's Raven and Hank.
"Hey," she says, smiling a little.
"Hello." Charles's eyebrows go up, and he lets the ladle on the counter and goes to them. "Is everything all right?"
She shrugs, and Hank is already dropping into a chair at the table. "Just waiting for test results again."
In recent years the teleporter has rarely showed himself here at all, and never agreed to be with Raven again once he discovered he had given her one child already. He only agreed to one. The assignment department finally allowed her to be paired again after hoping for a time that the teleporter would change his mind, and Raven and Hank have been married for two years now. Hank is twenty-three now, and the only child of Charles and Erik's to be married so far.
It was not easy to make it happen. But Erik has a minor position on the city council now, and with leverage he was able to make certain that they were placed together. But he won't be able to do it for all of them, and Charles knows it.
Certainly not for Sean and Moira. The council would never agree to that, though Charles and Erik and the few that agree with them have been working to change the minds of the people here for years-about the ridiculousness of the continuing of the assignment system, about humans…
Erik didn't always agree, though-about humans, anyhow. He still doesn't quite agree, but he supports Charles nonetheless.
Raven moves to sit beside her husband, and Charles sits across the corner at the end of the table. "I'm sure you're right this time…" he trails uncertainly.
They have no children yet, despite the fact that Hank, when he was tested, was revealed as another possible match for Raven's genetics. Suitable enough of a match, anyway, if not as perfect a match as the teleporter.
But it shouldn't matter. Raven and Hank are happy together, and that should be all that matters, but the assignment officials are not happy that they have not conceived yet. And tests have to be run to know whether or not Raven is pregnant, if they want to know more quickly. Her first pregnancy went more smoothly than most; the teleporter had been gone for more than four months before she knew she was pregnant at all.
"I hope so," Raven sighs. "They finally agreed to give us one more year, but I'd rather it would just happen so we wouldn't have to worry about it." Hank takes her hand on the table and squeezes it.
The assignment officials have threatened to separate and re-match them. Not that they really see it is a threat-just as a fact. They don't understand that Raven and Hank love each other. As spectacular the mutation is that her first child has-he is a teleporter, like his father, but colored more like his mother, though a darker blue-the leadership of the system wants more children from her. But Raven is thirty-two now, her prime years all but gone, and if she is going to have children again it needs to be soon.
Erik used what little influence he had to have them placed together in the first place. It's unlikely he'll be able to stop it if it's decided that they should be re-assigned.
Charles doesn't know what to say anymore, and Raven lets out a breath and acts as if she is going to change the subject. Her mouth opens again, but then she frowns and glances around her.
"Wait. Hank, where's Kurt? Wasn't he right behind us?"
"I'm right here!" A puff of sulfur behind them and he is, grinning impishly as only a twelve-year-old boy can. "Hi, Uncle Charles."
"Hello, Kurt," Charles chuckles.
Raven only rolls her eyes good-naturedly, quite used to her son's antics. "Come here, you." She grabs him around the waist and pulls him into her lap, tickling him, and he laughs and then disappears and rematerializes by the stairs.
"Hey, no cheating!" Raven calls.
"Where's Dad?" Hank asks.
"Still at work. I'm not entirely certain what he was supposed to be up to today." Erik's powers made his place in the community clear from the start. Working with metal.
"Who else is here?" Kurt asks.
"Bobby and Kitty are about with Marie somewhere, and Ororo is upstairs studying. You've just missed Jean; she went to find Sean. They were going to the library."
Kurt looks to his mother pleadingly.
"No. You are not going over there by yourself; Jean and Sean probably aren't there yet."
"But Moira's always there," he protests.
"Go upstairs and say hi to Ororo; we can go to the library later."
"Okay…" Kurt mumbles, and disappears.
"You had better be up there!" Raven calls.
"I am, Mom!"
Raven shakes her head. "I think sometimes he thinks he should get special treatment because he could teleport anywhere he wants to go. Do the other mothers let their twelve-year-olds cross town on their own? I don't think so. I'm not letting him do it, either."
"I agree," Charles shrugs. "And he'll mature soon enough. He isn't overall difficult."
"No," she smiles. "He's a good kid." She looks over at her husband lovingly. "And I think it's helping him having a father around."
Hank smiles sheepishly. He loves the boy like his own, Charles knows, and even if something were to happen…even if he and Raven were separated, he would still treat the boy as such.
But Charles intends to be certain they stay together, if there is anything at all he can do about it, and he knows Hank will not let anything separate them quietly.
Raven needs someone there for her, someone to fight for her, the way Erik has always been there for Charles.
Twenty-Four Years Ago
It took a bit longer than the requested six months for Charles to conceive, but he and Erik have been together for a year now, and he is four months pregnant and just starting to show.
He has been violently sick for nearly three of those four months.
"I know morning sickness is usual," Erik says, helping him from the bathroom yet again, "but this is becoming ridiculous. Most days you can't function. That cannot be normal."
Erik helps him to a chair at the table, and Charles lets his head drop into his arms on its surface. "Well my situation is rather different," he offers weakly.
"I know, but…" He lowers himself into the next chair and frowns. Too young. You're so young. Before the war you would have been considered much too young to be doing this. That can't be helping.
Charles doesn't know if he was supposed to hear those thoughts, but he's tired and when he's tired he can't control it as easily. He hears a bit more than he should. And he knows Erik is right, too. Erik remembers more than he does and he knows from others, from their memories, like he knows other things. Charles knows that even though he's sixteen now he's still young for this, or he would have been in the world before.
"We're going in to the infirmary tomorrow. We'll ask. We'll have someone take a look at you," Erik says suddenly.
"Do we have to?" He doesn't really feel like going anywhere. He would rather curl up in bed and stay there.
"We need to make sure you're all right," Erik insists.
So they go the next morning, leaving Raven with trusted neighbors, Charles bundled against the fall chill and Erik with an arm around his shoulders to keep him steady.
Erik still isn't overly affectionate. Not really. In bed is the only time they touch very much at all, except at time like now, when Charles needs a steadying hand, and of course they haven't been together since finding out for sure that Charles was pregnant.
It did get better.
Erik still doesn't smile much, and when he does one has to be looking to really see them-they're nothing more than a quirk of his mouth. But Erik did teach him to cook, and Charles is getting better at it. They talk, quite often, actually-about anything and everything, and they've developed something that way. But one thing Erik will not talk about is his past, and Charles will not intrude into his mind to find out on his own. The walls are still up, but Charles knows Erik cares.
If he didn't care they wouldn't be here now, Erik herding him carefully but urgently through the streets to the center of town, where the council building and the assignment department and the infirmary are.
The doctor that sees them-the lead doctor on Charles's case-examines him thoroughly, but seems to find nothing wrong.
"There's nothing overtly out of sorts," he says. "I'm afraid the sickness is simply part of it. I'm sorry; we were afraid this would happen…that it would be worse for you."
"But why is it worse?" Charles questions, and Erik is standing near the examination table and Charles can sense that he's rather tightly wound.
"You have what's needed to carry a child, and most of the extra hormones you need to make is easier, but it's likely that you don't have quite enough of them. You know the mutation isn't perfect, and…well, to be honest it's probably a bit unstable…"
"Unstable?" Erik echoes angrily. "Why didn't you tell us this before?"
"We didn't know for sure. There was just as much possibility that a pregnancy would go smoothly if it occurred."
"If? You can't be saying you weren't even sure of that."
"He's predominantly male, and the mutation is…as I said, imperfect. In the wild, if he weren't part of an intelligent species that could work around its difficulties, it wouldn't work at all. And since he has no way to give birth if he had become pregnant it would have killed him. Of course we weren't sure; our medical knowledge and technology are really the only things making the mutation functional. He would never have even known about it without them-it would have been a simple case of someone born with extra, useless organs, which was relatively common even in humans."
"Uhm, I'm right here…" Charles protests.
Neither of them are listening. They're too busy glaring each other down.
"How the hell could you consider putting him through this if you weren't even sure it was going to work and you weren't even sure it was safe!" Erik shouts. He's livid now, and Charles wonders if this is part of what Erik's walls are hiding from him-this part of him that is anger and rage.
"You don't understand the potential there is, between your genes, the two of you together. It had to be attempted. If he hadn't conceived he always could have been reassigned to a women and fathered children normally, and he would have been fine. He's fine now. We can give him hormone injections that will make it easier on him-so he won't be so sick. He'll be fine."
And Erik should be focusing on that part, that they can help Charles-Charles is-but Erik is pale now, and he only has one thought, and it's so loud that Charles hears it clearly.
You would have taken him AWAY from me?
"Erik," Charles says quickly. At first there is no response. "Erik!" Finally his husband-his husband, and he's smiling inwardly-glances at him, and Charles continues. "Erik, I want to go home. We're done here."
Erik blinks, coming out of whatever state he'd been in, calming down and listening to him. "Don't you want the injection?"
Charles nods a bit. "Yes…but as soon as that's done we should go home. Let's just go home," he says quietly.
And finally Erik nods. "All right…"
The doctor gives him the injection, tells him it may take a while to work, and tells him to come back at certain intervals. As soon as it's done Erik whisks him from the infirmary building.
"I can't believe them…" he's seething.
"I know. Neither can I, but I'm all right. I'll be fine. It happened, I'm pregnant, and as long as the hormones help and I'm not so violently ill anymore there should be nothing to worry about."
"That's no excuse for what they did to you."
"Perhaps not, but being angry isn't going to change anything…" Charles trails off and moans at a sudden wave of nausea, and Erik's arm tightens around his shoulder but he has to push it away to dart into the alley they're near so that he can be sick. It happens quickly, and by the time Erik recovers enough to realize what's happened and follows him Charles is on his knees and nearly finished retching.
"Charles?"
He coughs one last time and wipes his mouth. "'m…all right…" But now he's dizzy, and when he tries to stand, even with Erik's help, he sways so badly Erik simply scoops him up in his arms.
"Erik…"
"I've got you." It's all he says, but it's enough. Charles knows he doesn't mind doing this. Which is probably a good thing. He's not so certain he could get back to the house just now.
Erik carries him back, and the front door opens of its own accord, pushed by the metal handle. The same happens with the bedroom door, and Erik gently sets him down in their bed.
"Get some rest," he murmurs, and Charles barely has time to nod before he's drifted off.
He wakes up hours later, in the late afternoon if he's judging the waning sunlight correctly. He no longer feels sick, just a bit weak, and he takes a book and goes out into the main room to the table. There's a large lamp in the center of it, and it's easier to read there than with the smaller one on the desk in the bedroom.
Only the more important public buildings have what little electricity they're able to generate.
Erik is there, making dinner. Raven is nowhere to be seen, but Charles senses her upstairs.
"Are you feeling better?" Erik asks him.
Charles nods sincerely. "Quite a bit, thank you." He sits, lights the lamp to augment the dying sunlight, and opens his book. After a bit he realizes that Erik is finished with whatever he is cooking and that he's just watching Charles read.
"You know where my books are, if you'd like to get one of for yourself."
It's strange. Despite Erik's initial appreciation of the books, in an entire year Charles hasn't seen him pick one of them up for any longer than to flip through it.
Erik looks at him for a long moment, as if contemplating something quite important, and Charles frowns when he senses the discomfort there.
"What is it?" he asks finally.
Erik looks away. "I can't," he says finally.
"Can't what?"
"Read," he admits stiffly. "Not well."
Charles blinks, confused. "I don't understand…you were older when the war began…"
"We were poor. I wasn't in school because I had to work with my father. My mother was teaching me, but it was coming along slowly. There wasn't much time for it. And I've forgotten much of what I did know. I do know it's important, but…I suppose I just never got around to learning again."
"Oh…do you still want to learn?" Erik looks at him steadily now, questioningly, and Charles continues. He feels warm now, more than the stove or the lamp could make him feel, because Erik told him something-something about his past. It's a step. "If you were patient enough to teach me to cook, I'm sure I could help you improve your reading. Especially since you already have a basis for it."
"You wouldn't mind?"
"Of course not. I ought to repay you, anyhow." Charles motions to the chair beside him.
"Dinner's ready."
"After dinner then."
And Erik smiles just a little more than usual, before turning to pull out the plates and to call Raven down to eat.
Charles can't help smiling to himself, remembering Erik's panicked thought from back at the infirmary. You would have taken him AWAY from me? As if it would have been a bad thing.
Even if it doesn't really mean anything else in particular, Erik wants him here.
Word Count: 5,500 (Chapter) - 11,000 (Whole Fic)
Pairings: Charles/Erik, Raven/Hank, Sean/Moira, Scott/Jean, very brief Raven/Azazel
Rating: PG-13 (More R this chapter, for one part)
Summary: Charles and Erik have been married for 25 years, thrown together by a mandatory post-apocalyptic pairing system attempting to increase and strengthen the population. They have seven children. They have never spoken of love, but change is on the horizon.
Warnings: mpreg, underaged characters for part of it but in their society they're adults, and it's a bit of a dystopia but with a happy ending
Thirteen Years Ago
"Charles…"
Charles is washing dishes when he hears his sister's voice behind him, and at the distress in her voice and in her mind he turns quickly and find her in the open front doorway of the house.
She hadn't knocked. She doesn't need to. This was her home until last year, when she turned eighteen and moved to the young women's boarding house.
"Raven!" Charles drops everything, dries his hands on his trousers and goes to her quickly. She is trying not to lean on the doorknob, and he pulls her gently away from the door and shuts it behind her before pulling her into his arms. "Are you all right? What happened? He didn't hurt you, did he?"
Raven is nineteen now. The population has grown enough that the elders feel comfortable allowing the pairing system to wait until the young people are seventeen or eighteen now, before matching them, and she should have been matched a year or more ago. But as a shapeshifter her DNA is different even from that of most other mutants, and there was trouble finding a suitable partner for her.
There were two or three young men in town who would have been suitable enough, genetically, but they weren't happy enough with that. They didn't pair her with any of them.
"No…" Raven is saying against his shoulder. "I'm fine, I just…he's gone. And I couldn't stay in that godawful boarding house one more second…" Not that the conditions are awful. They're fine. He's seen the boarding houses and apartments for the young people, and they're comfortable enough, as anything can be these days. But he can feel that she simply wanted to be home.
The children are playing upstairs, all five of them, and Charles glances up and hears their footsteps pounding overhead. They could come down here at any time.
"Come here," he says gently, and leads her into the bedroom and shuts the door behind them. Raven sinks onto the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around herself.
"Why won't he just…I don't care if he's never here. He could still marry me. Then at least I would be married and I wouldn't feel like…like some sort of cast-off. I know I'm not the only one, but…" She looks up at him dejectedly, and Charles swallows and sits beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
"I grew up here," she says quietly. "I watched you and Erik…I mean, if nothing else you two get along. He wanted to marry you and he cares enough that he's not sorry he did, and he cares about the kids. He's taking just as much responsibility raising them…I wanted that."
There was one possibility that was better, genetically, than the two or three other possible matches for her that there were. A teleporter that had first come here a few years ago, bringing them what little information they did have about the rest of the world and how it was coping and recovering. He was here sometimes, and sometimes he was here for a while, but often he was not here at all. He was not officially part of the town. He was not subject to the pairing system.
But it had been discovered that his genetic makeup was much more compatible with Raven's than anyone else, and without consulting her at all, of course, the leaders of the assignment department had asked him to pair with her.
Not to marry her. Not to stay. Just to mate with her.
And he had agreed to that, just to that, and reluctantly. Charles was furious. He is still furious. But he won't show it in front of her. Not now. That isn't what she needs now.
Charles blinks back tears and pulls her closer, kissing the side of her head. "I know. I know…I'm so sorry."
This has to stop. They can't keep doing this to them. To people like his sister. Maybe they need a larger population. Maybe they need stronger individuals to help avoid extinction with the radiation that's still present outside the cities. Maybe this is, to some extent, necessary.
But that doesn't mean that emotions no longer exist. That doesn't mean that the young people being rejected by their partners are not hurt by it. Even many of those who are married are not content.
"Mom? Mom?" Footsteps on the stairs, out in the main part of the house, and in a moment the bedroom door opens and a curious head pokes inside. "Mom, where are y-oh. Sorry."
"What is it, Hank?" Henry is the oldest, nearly eleven now.
Charles's arm had fallen from her shoulder and Raven has straightened. She smiles at the boy in the doorway. "Hey, you."
Hank smiles brightly. "Hi, Raven." He has a ridiculously obvious crush on the older girl, nursed for years while they grew up as friends under the same roof. He has always admired her, looked up to her. Raven is fond of him, too, if not in the same way. Not now, anyway. Hank is still too young. They are not related by blood, so it isn't so strange either way, but it doesn't matter now.
Raven's been paired.
Hank looks at Charles then, and shrugs a little, sheepishly. "Ororo got mad again. There's a cloud in the corner. We need the mop…"
Ororo is three and prone to temper tantrums. Her emerging powers can be a bit of a nuisance, but he isn't worried about her. He can tell already that she's going to be bright. She'll learn to control her powers soon enough.
Charles's eyebrows knit together. "I'll be up in a moment."
"Okay." Hank glances at Raven again, smiles once more, and is gone.
When they're alone again, Raven lets out a heavy breath. "Can I stay here for a while?" she asks weakly.
Charles looks at her again, and squeezes her hand. "Of course. Your bed is still upstairs, and you will always be welcome here anyhow."
He and Erik and those like them are lucky, and he knows it.
Twenty-Five Years Ago
They only explained some of it to him, before he and Raven came here. Enough that he would know what to do. It's going to be different for him and Erik, than for the other couples.
They told Charles that besides having everything a normal male would, he has everything else inside that a female would need, to conceive and carry a child. But nothing on the outside. Of course, because he would have noticed by now if that were so. From his DNA they determined that the mutation has allowed for him be designed different, on the inside, besides the extra organs that are there. There should be a way, they told him, for fertilization to take place if he has intercourse with a male the only way two men can. A passageway that isn't there in normal males, to the womb other men don't, of course, have.
Of course, before that they had to explain how things work normally. Just trying to survive for the ten years since the war began, he'd had no time for physical relations. No one had ever explained them to him. Only vague comments from those older had given him any idea at all about any of it before the scientists and doctors back in the other town explained it to him before he left. And explained how it was different for him.
The mutation isn't perfect. It's secondary, and not all secondary mutations are. With none of the outward characteristics a female would have he cannot give birth in the usual way, and they're relatively certain he will not have milk for the children, either. If he conceives the children will have to be taken surgically to be born at all, and the department will arrange for a wet nurse.
Charles has wondered, since then, what the point of it all is. Why they paired him with a man when having children is going to be more trouble for him than for the girls. He is still perfectly capable of fathering children; why can't he do that? They told him he would be more valuable this way, but he doesn't understand how.
But many of the doubts and fears melt into the background as Erik takes him. He doesn't know how much of the specifics Erik knows, but they must have told him enough. He knows what to do, and how to prepare Charles to make it easier, and he does it as gently as he can. As respectfully as he can.
Charles is grateful for that, knows that he'll be all right if Erik is really as concerned about it as he senses from him, but it still hurts. They told him it would, at least in the beginning. Until he's more used it. Until they're both better at it. Right now it's clumsy and awkward, neither of them entirely sure they're doing this right even though they're doing exactly what they were told to do.
Erik has never been with anyone either.
Erik asks him more than once if he's all right. Charles clutches at the sheets and nods, telling himself it doesn't hurt so much as it's strange. But he can sense that Erik doesn't believe him, and finally he has to put it into words.
"It's all right. It's…it will get better. I'm all right."
But it hurts. It really does. Once he cries out before he can stop himself and they both freeze, Charles's fingers going quickly to his temple. Raven is still asleep. She didn't hear anything. If she had he would have erased it.
"Raven…?" Erik asks.
"Asleep," he confirms quietly. It makes him indescribably happy that this man who has just met them is also concerned for his sister. He doesn't think he could be with anyone who would treat her with any less care.
"Charles…" Erik says, a bit unevenly. "Are you sure…? Maybe we shouldn't…we can try again later." Erik doesn't want to be hurting him. But he was close before the interruption and his eyes are dark with need, and everything they discussed before this began is still relevant.
"I doubt it would be any different later," Charles answers.
Erik begins again, and as it goes on it does, finally, become a bit easier to handle. He can tell that they were right; at some point it won't hurt so much. He's still not certain he believes he'll ever get any pleasure from it, but only time will tell.
Erik finishes, clutching at him tightly to ride it out, and Charles lets out a breath and is finally able to relax. Erik rolls off of him and Charles rolls onto his back, both of them catching their breath.
"Are you all right?" Erik asks yet again.
Moving told him how sore he is, and Charles winces. "I will be. It's all right." Erik is looking at him regretfully, and Charles wishes he wouldn't. It isn't his fault. He did everything he could to make this easier.
When Erik reaches out Charles isn't sure, at first, what he's doing. "Here, let me…" He looks at Charles questioningly, and Charles doesn't understand at first, but then he realizes that he's hard. Between the ache in his muscles and trying to keep Erik from feeling so guilty all this time, he'd hardly noticed. Or he had, but he'd pushed it to the back of his mind.
"You don't have to…" Charles frowns. But he isn't saying no.
"It should help," Erik murmurs, and he slides closer again. He takes Charles in his hands, strokes him rhythmically. This, too, is something he isn't completely familiar with, though this, at least, he knew of before-pleasure, discovered by accident, as he supposes it probably happens for most. But there was never time for this, either. He hasn't experienced it often, and when Erik brings him to climax it's more intense than anything he's ever achieved on his own. Much better. He has to clench his jaw tightly shut to keep quiet, and his hands fist in the sheets again.
Charles is still trembling a little, catching his breath again when Erik moves away for a moment and comes back with a towel from under the bed and cleans them both off.
"Do you feel better?" he asks hopefully.
"Yes, actually," he whispers, calming himself to stillness and sighing, more easily now. The ache is receding, much more manageable now. "Thank you." It wasn't necessary. It was only necessary that Erik come inside him, but Erik did it anyway. For him. "Thank you."
"It's the least I can do…I shouldn't be the only one getting anything out of this," Erik says quietly. "Especially not when…when it hurts you…" There's so much pain, not in his voice, but in his mind, that Charles looks at him quickly.
"It didn't hurt so much in the end. It really was getting better. I'm sure it will improve more in the future. And I'm all right, Erik, really." The name feels right, somehow, rolling off his tongue.
"You're sure?"
"I have a feeling I may grow tired of hearing that…"
And the older man still doesn't smile, not exactly. He won't let his walls down quite that much. Not yet. But one corner of his mouth twitches, just for a second, before he sits up to pull the blankets from the foot of the bed over them.
And Erik is quiet again, and they sleep on opposite sides of the bed. Charles tries to push down the small part of him that feels hurt by that, because he expected it. They've just met each other. They've done what is expected of them, and he shouldn't expect anything more. Not now, at least. Not until they know each other better. And it seems as if Erik isn't the particularly affectionate sort as it is.
But he's kind. He has a good heart. That should be enough for Charles to be content enough, tied to him. Certainly in this world, where he might not have had even that.
Charles hopes it will be enough.
The next morning when he wakes there is quite a bit of light streaming through the curtains of the one window in the room, and he isn't sure how late it is but he's certain he should have been awake by now.
But Erik hasn't disturbed him. Erik, actually, is near the window, looking at Charles's things on the shelf curiously.
He pushes himself up on his elbows. "Erik?"
Erik glances at him. "You have books of your own." Not mentioning last night, which is all right, though Charles can still sense the concern beneath the surface.
"Yes…I do." There are only a few-only what he could carry in the bag, before he and Raven settled in the other town and they were wandering with others, trying to find a place to call home. He found the books in various places-took the ones that were less damaged that he found interesting.
Maybe he was only five when the war began, but he was beginning to read then, and since then he has gathered the rest of the skills he needs to do it from others' minds. He has always felt a bit guilty about that, but when just trying to survive no one was going to take the time to finish teaching him.
And Charles wanted to know how. That, and he's discovered that reading is an escape-fiction, especially-from the world they live in now.
"I like reading," Charles fills in. "I know it's important, too. I've been trying to teach Raven. She's bright, and she's learning, but she doesn't like to sit still."
Erik raises his eyebrows, and the corner of his mouth twitches like it did last night. "So you're smart."
"I don't know if I would say that."
"I would. Most people don't care about books anymore. It's the older survivors trying to collect them. It's good that you care, too. It means you understand, like you said, that we can't let things like that be lost completely. That's intelligent." Erik sighs. "We need more intelligence around here."
Charles smiles at him, even more sure now that, somehow, they can make this work.
Now
Not long after Jean leaves the front door swings open again. Charles glances back briefly, expecting to see Bobby and Kitty and Marie flying inside and up the stairs, but instead it's Raven and Hank.
"Hey," she says, smiling a little.
"Hello." Charles's eyebrows go up, and he lets the ladle on the counter and goes to them. "Is everything all right?"
She shrugs, and Hank is already dropping into a chair at the table. "Just waiting for test results again."
In recent years the teleporter has rarely showed himself here at all, and never agreed to be with Raven again once he discovered he had given her one child already. He only agreed to one. The assignment department finally allowed her to be paired again after hoping for a time that the teleporter would change his mind, and Raven and Hank have been married for two years now. Hank is twenty-three now, and the only child of Charles and Erik's to be married so far.
It was not easy to make it happen. But Erik has a minor position on the city council now, and with leverage he was able to make certain that they were placed together. But he won't be able to do it for all of them, and Charles knows it.
Certainly not for Sean and Moira. The council would never agree to that, though Charles and Erik and the few that agree with them have been working to change the minds of the people here for years-about the ridiculousness of the continuing of the assignment system, about humans…
Erik didn't always agree, though-about humans, anyhow. He still doesn't quite agree, but he supports Charles nonetheless.
Raven moves to sit beside her husband, and Charles sits across the corner at the end of the table. "I'm sure you're right this time…" he trails uncertainly.
They have no children yet, despite the fact that Hank, when he was tested, was revealed as another possible match for Raven's genetics. Suitable enough of a match, anyway, if not as perfect a match as the teleporter.
But it shouldn't matter. Raven and Hank are happy together, and that should be all that matters, but the assignment officials are not happy that they have not conceived yet. And tests have to be run to know whether or not Raven is pregnant, if they want to know more quickly. Her first pregnancy went more smoothly than most; the teleporter had been gone for more than four months before she knew she was pregnant at all.
"I hope so," Raven sighs. "They finally agreed to give us one more year, but I'd rather it would just happen so we wouldn't have to worry about it." Hank takes her hand on the table and squeezes it.
The assignment officials have threatened to separate and re-match them. Not that they really see it is a threat-just as a fact. They don't understand that Raven and Hank love each other. As spectacular the mutation is that her first child has-he is a teleporter, like his father, but colored more like his mother, though a darker blue-the leadership of the system wants more children from her. But Raven is thirty-two now, her prime years all but gone, and if she is going to have children again it needs to be soon.
Erik used what little influence he had to have them placed together in the first place. It's unlikely he'll be able to stop it if it's decided that they should be re-assigned.
Charles doesn't know what to say anymore, and Raven lets out a breath and acts as if she is going to change the subject. Her mouth opens again, but then she frowns and glances around her.
"Wait. Hank, where's Kurt? Wasn't he right behind us?"
"I'm right here!" A puff of sulfur behind them and he is, grinning impishly as only a twelve-year-old boy can. "Hi, Uncle Charles."
"Hello, Kurt," Charles chuckles.
Raven only rolls her eyes good-naturedly, quite used to her son's antics. "Come here, you." She grabs him around the waist and pulls him into her lap, tickling him, and he laughs and then disappears and rematerializes by the stairs.
"Hey, no cheating!" Raven calls.
"Where's Dad?" Hank asks.
"Still at work. I'm not entirely certain what he was supposed to be up to today." Erik's powers made his place in the community clear from the start. Working with metal.
"Who else is here?" Kurt asks.
"Bobby and Kitty are about with Marie somewhere, and Ororo is upstairs studying. You've just missed Jean; she went to find Sean. They were going to the library."
Kurt looks to his mother pleadingly.
"No. You are not going over there by yourself; Jean and Sean probably aren't there yet."
"But Moira's always there," he protests.
"Go upstairs and say hi to Ororo; we can go to the library later."
"Okay…" Kurt mumbles, and disappears.
"You had better be up there!" Raven calls.
"I am, Mom!"
Raven shakes her head. "I think sometimes he thinks he should get special treatment because he could teleport anywhere he wants to go. Do the other mothers let their twelve-year-olds cross town on their own? I don't think so. I'm not letting him do it, either."
"I agree," Charles shrugs. "And he'll mature soon enough. He isn't overall difficult."
"No," she smiles. "He's a good kid." She looks over at her husband lovingly. "And I think it's helping him having a father around."
Hank smiles sheepishly. He loves the boy like his own, Charles knows, and even if something were to happen…even if he and Raven were separated, he would still treat the boy as such.
But Charles intends to be certain they stay together, if there is anything at all he can do about it, and he knows Hank will not let anything separate them quietly.
Raven needs someone there for her, someone to fight for her, the way Erik has always been there for Charles.
Twenty-Four Years Ago
It took a bit longer than the requested six months for Charles to conceive, but he and Erik have been together for a year now, and he is four months pregnant and just starting to show.
He has been violently sick for nearly three of those four months.
"I know morning sickness is usual," Erik says, helping him from the bathroom yet again, "but this is becoming ridiculous. Most days you can't function. That cannot be normal."
Erik helps him to a chair at the table, and Charles lets his head drop into his arms on its surface. "Well my situation is rather different," he offers weakly.
"I know, but…" He lowers himself into the next chair and frowns. Too young. You're so young. Before the war you would have been considered much too young to be doing this. That can't be helping.
Charles doesn't know if he was supposed to hear those thoughts, but he's tired and when he's tired he can't control it as easily. He hears a bit more than he should. And he knows Erik is right, too. Erik remembers more than he does and he knows from others, from their memories, like he knows other things. Charles knows that even though he's sixteen now he's still young for this, or he would have been in the world before.
"We're going in to the infirmary tomorrow. We'll ask. We'll have someone take a look at you," Erik says suddenly.
"Do we have to?" He doesn't really feel like going anywhere. He would rather curl up in bed and stay there.
"We need to make sure you're all right," Erik insists.
So they go the next morning, leaving Raven with trusted neighbors, Charles bundled against the fall chill and Erik with an arm around his shoulders to keep him steady.
Erik still isn't overly affectionate. Not really. In bed is the only time they touch very much at all, except at time like now, when Charles needs a steadying hand, and of course they haven't been together since finding out for sure that Charles was pregnant.
It did get better.
Erik still doesn't smile much, and when he does one has to be looking to really see them-they're nothing more than a quirk of his mouth. But Erik did teach him to cook, and Charles is getting better at it. They talk, quite often, actually-about anything and everything, and they've developed something that way. But one thing Erik will not talk about is his past, and Charles will not intrude into his mind to find out on his own. The walls are still up, but Charles knows Erik cares.
If he didn't care they wouldn't be here now, Erik herding him carefully but urgently through the streets to the center of town, where the council building and the assignment department and the infirmary are.
The doctor that sees them-the lead doctor on Charles's case-examines him thoroughly, but seems to find nothing wrong.
"There's nothing overtly out of sorts," he says. "I'm afraid the sickness is simply part of it. I'm sorry; we were afraid this would happen…that it would be worse for you."
"But why is it worse?" Charles questions, and Erik is standing near the examination table and Charles can sense that he's rather tightly wound.
"You have what's needed to carry a child, and most of the extra hormones you need to make is easier, but it's likely that you don't have quite enough of them. You know the mutation isn't perfect, and…well, to be honest it's probably a bit unstable…"
"Unstable?" Erik echoes angrily. "Why didn't you tell us this before?"
"We didn't know for sure. There was just as much possibility that a pregnancy would go smoothly if it occurred."
"If? You can't be saying you weren't even sure of that."
"He's predominantly male, and the mutation is…as I said, imperfect. In the wild, if he weren't part of an intelligent species that could work around its difficulties, it wouldn't work at all. And since he has no way to give birth if he had become pregnant it would have killed him. Of course we weren't sure; our medical knowledge and technology are really the only things making the mutation functional. He would never have even known about it without them-it would have been a simple case of someone born with extra, useless organs, which was relatively common even in humans."
"Uhm, I'm right here…" Charles protests.
Neither of them are listening. They're too busy glaring each other down.
"How the hell could you consider putting him through this if you weren't even sure it was going to work and you weren't even sure it was safe!" Erik shouts. He's livid now, and Charles wonders if this is part of what Erik's walls are hiding from him-this part of him that is anger and rage.
"You don't understand the potential there is, between your genes, the two of you together. It had to be attempted. If he hadn't conceived he always could have been reassigned to a women and fathered children normally, and he would have been fine. He's fine now. We can give him hormone injections that will make it easier on him-so he won't be so sick. He'll be fine."
And Erik should be focusing on that part, that they can help Charles-Charles is-but Erik is pale now, and he only has one thought, and it's so loud that Charles hears it clearly.
You would have taken him AWAY from me?
"Erik," Charles says quickly. At first there is no response. "Erik!" Finally his husband-his husband, and he's smiling inwardly-glances at him, and Charles continues. "Erik, I want to go home. We're done here."
Erik blinks, coming out of whatever state he'd been in, calming down and listening to him. "Don't you want the injection?"
Charles nods a bit. "Yes…but as soon as that's done we should go home. Let's just go home," he says quietly.
And finally Erik nods. "All right…"
The doctor gives him the injection, tells him it may take a while to work, and tells him to come back at certain intervals. As soon as it's done Erik whisks him from the infirmary building.
"I can't believe them…" he's seething.
"I know. Neither can I, but I'm all right. I'll be fine. It happened, I'm pregnant, and as long as the hormones help and I'm not so violently ill anymore there should be nothing to worry about."
"That's no excuse for what they did to you."
"Perhaps not, but being angry isn't going to change anything…" Charles trails off and moans at a sudden wave of nausea, and Erik's arm tightens around his shoulder but he has to push it away to dart into the alley they're near so that he can be sick. It happens quickly, and by the time Erik recovers enough to realize what's happened and follows him Charles is on his knees and nearly finished retching.
"Charles?"
He coughs one last time and wipes his mouth. "'m…all right…" But now he's dizzy, and when he tries to stand, even with Erik's help, he sways so badly Erik simply scoops him up in his arms.
"Erik…"
"I've got you." It's all he says, but it's enough. Charles knows he doesn't mind doing this. Which is probably a good thing. He's not so certain he could get back to the house just now.
Erik carries him back, and the front door opens of its own accord, pushed by the metal handle. The same happens with the bedroom door, and Erik gently sets him down in their bed.
"Get some rest," he murmurs, and Charles barely has time to nod before he's drifted off.
He wakes up hours later, in the late afternoon if he's judging the waning sunlight correctly. He no longer feels sick, just a bit weak, and he takes a book and goes out into the main room to the table. There's a large lamp in the center of it, and it's easier to read there than with the smaller one on the desk in the bedroom.
Only the more important public buildings have what little electricity they're able to generate.
Erik is there, making dinner. Raven is nowhere to be seen, but Charles senses her upstairs.
"Are you feeling better?" Erik asks him.
Charles nods sincerely. "Quite a bit, thank you." He sits, lights the lamp to augment the dying sunlight, and opens his book. After a bit he realizes that Erik is finished with whatever he is cooking and that he's just watching Charles read.
"You know where my books are, if you'd like to get one of for yourself."
It's strange. Despite Erik's initial appreciation of the books, in an entire year Charles hasn't seen him pick one of them up for any longer than to flip through it.
Erik looks at him for a long moment, as if contemplating something quite important, and Charles frowns when he senses the discomfort there.
"What is it?" he asks finally.
Erik looks away. "I can't," he says finally.
"Can't what?"
"Read," he admits stiffly. "Not well."
Charles blinks, confused. "I don't understand…you were older when the war began…"
"We were poor. I wasn't in school because I had to work with my father. My mother was teaching me, but it was coming along slowly. There wasn't much time for it. And I've forgotten much of what I did know. I do know it's important, but…I suppose I just never got around to learning again."
"Oh…do you still want to learn?" Erik looks at him steadily now, questioningly, and Charles continues. He feels warm now, more than the stove or the lamp could make him feel, because Erik told him something-something about his past. It's a step. "If you were patient enough to teach me to cook, I'm sure I could help you improve your reading. Especially since you already have a basis for it."
"You wouldn't mind?"
"Of course not. I ought to repay you, anyhow." Charles motions to the chair beside him.
"Dinner's ready."
"After dinner then."
And Erik smiles just a little more than usual, before turning to pull out the plates and to call Raven down to eat.
Charles can't help smiling to himself, remembering Erik's panicked thought from back at the infirmary. You would have taken him AWAY from me? As if it would have been a bad thing.
Even if it doesn't really mean anything else in particular, Erik wants him here.