Five Acts - Round Six

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Five Acts - Round Six

-Just list your five favourite acts/kinks in a post, your favourite pairings from different fandoms and someone will write a comment-fic for you :)
-Then go and hunt down other lists so that you can write comment-fic for people in return! The link is up above, just click "Five Acts." It's being organized by toestastegood so be sure to thank

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Broken Radio - X-Men: First Class, Charles/Erik, seeing the dead

[emerald_embers]

There are quirks to his abilities that Charles doesn't tell anyone. Yes, he can read people's minds; he can also hear radio signals and television signals, though given he isn't a decoder, the resulting buzzing in his ears is somewhat less pleasant. The people he's particularly close to tend to find out about the latter one way or another, and are kind enough to take up reading, exercise, or other activities that don't involve putting further radio signals into the air to give him headaches.

What no one knows is that the reading people's minds ability does not require the minds to belong to people with a pulse.

In most cases it isn't much of an issue. The dead tend to keep to themselves, or pass on to wherever it is they pass on to - even the dead aren't sure of that. All Charles knows is that occasionally he'll be reading the mind of someone recently deceased, and after a few moments of seeing puzzled, they'll disappear - no indications of whether they fade to nothing, ascend to Heaven, or join a cycle of reincarnation.

With Erik, it's one of the strangest things he's ever encountered.

Charles has seen husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, sometimes people who were simply best friends hovering around each other beforehand. But that's usually all it is - hovering, wandering around the places that they live in, offering support their loved ones can't hear or feel.

Erik is surrounded. Stranger still, after reading Erik's mind, Charles has only been able to identify about four of the crowd who circle him, unaware of each other, and unaware that Charles can see their thoughts.

Erik is surrounded by more love than Charles has ever seen before, and it makes their relationship all the stranger. Charles loves Erik, fiercely and dearly, but it's disconcerting to feel the judgement and disapproval of many of Erik's loved ones when he makes any attempts to further their relationship. It's almost like suffering erectile dysfunction while still being a sexual being - what he wants with Erik, and what he knows Erik wants from him, he can't satisfy.

So they play chess, and argue fiercely, and when it's late, and the lights are out, Charles curls around Erik and presses his nose to the back of Erik's neck, and shivers when he feels the shifting of bedsheets as Erik strokes himself to orgasm without a word.

The dead who surround Erik never judge him for what he does, but they don't trust Charles with him.

Sometimes, Charles almost tells him. When they swim together, when one of them walks in on the other bathing, when they're so close he can taste the whiskey on Erik's breath, it's almost enough to make him tell Erik the truth.

But as much as it hurts to hide from Erik, to pull away before they kiss, to close his eyes when Erik grinds up against him, he can't bear the thought that knowing it could hurt him more.

Erik's mother has not left his side since the day she died. She's seen everything he's ever done, seen everyone he has killed, seen all the hatred in his heart as it's started to consume him. And she still loves him. Unconditionally.

Charles never knows whether to call it compassion or cowardice, but he'd rather take their sexless, but not loveless marriage, and protect Erik by whatever means he can.

With all those who surround Erik who are nameless in Erik's mind, Charles wonders if he's not the first.

Re: Broken Radio - X-Men: First Class, Charles/Erik, seeing the dead

[ms_notebook]

OH MY GOD, MY LIIIIFE!!! This is very very beautiful. An amazing perspective on "seeing the dead." I have considered that Charles could hear the minds or voices of those that are deceased before but never to this degree.

Just, that, Erik being surrounded by the people he loves... their quiet disapproval of Charles because they don't trust him around Erik... How Charles would rather love Erik than have sex anyways... it's so very touching and tragic and all my feelings... (dies)

I really enjoyed all the details you put into this drabble. Just. WOW. Very amazing. Thank you so so so much for writing about my favourite trope ^_^

Now I shall pop by to see your five acts and think of what I could write in return... hm.... :)