[fic] In which Charles actually has a twin brother, who now wants to kick Erik's ass (2/?)
Title: In which Charles actually has a twin brother, who now wants to kick Erik's ass (2/?)
Pairing: Charles/Erik (eventually)
Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 989
Warnings: explicit language
Summary: Wesley didn’t want much out of life, but what he wanted the most was for Charles and Raven to be safe and happy. So he was rightfully displeased when he heard the message left on his emergency line, and by someone distinctly not Charles or Raven. (XMFC/Wanted crossover)
Notes: I just loved the idea of Charles and Wesley being twins and Wesley flipping out when he finds out someone hurt his brother, and suddenly, I couldn't resist writing this.
It isn't beta'd because I didn't want to trouble her with this just yet with everything else I've piled on her. Also, I'm not quite sure where this is all headed, but we'll see. I'm aiming for a fix-it, but that's if Wesley will ever let Erik within a mile's radius of Charles...
Chapter 1
Chapter 2 - Charles
When he woke for the first time since being rushed to Miami, the most familiar mind in the world was next to him.
He turned his head to look.
His other half, his twin, had squeezed himself onto the narrow hospital bed and was staring passively up at the ceiling with arms folded on his chest and one ankle crossed over the other. There was a shallow cut on his face, just below his left cheekbone, and dark smudges under his eyes, but otherwise he looked well. A little worn on the edges, but Charles was used to seeing him so whenever his twin returned to him from wherever he needed to scamper off to for weeks or months at a time. Anger, worry and guilt tumbled over each other in his brother’s mind, but most important was the protective, boundless love they shared for each other, overpowering and soothing the physical and psychic ache in Charles’ own head.
“What the fuck did you get yourself into, Charlie? And who do I need to shoot?”
As crude as ever, but his voice was the most wonderful sound to Charles’ ears at the moment. Charles didn’t even have the will to chide him as he usually did.
“Wes,” he gasped instead.
His memories of the last few days crashed down on him, painful and oppressive like they’d crush his lungs. He inhaled, then exhaled sharply, tried to breathe steadily.
Wesley pressed himself to his side as carefully as possible, wrapped his arms tightly around him, and tucked Charles’ head under his chin. Charles pressed his face against his brother’s neck, breathed in the familiar smell of leather, gunpowder, and wax.
“Wes,” he said again, because his brother was here, right when he needed him the most, like always, and he could feel the sobs threatening to start, the tightness in his throat.
He hated that he couldn’t feel Wesley’s legs pressed against his own.
“I’m here, Charles.”
Wesley didn’t promise to stay, didn’t promise to look after him.
He didn’t need to.
Charles fell asleep again a little later, the skin where his brother’s neck joined shoulder wet with his tears.
Unsurprisingly, Wesley was still there when Charles woke again, though seated properly in a chair this time. Charles stifled the childish impulse to ask Wesley to climb back onto the bed with him.
Wesley looked up from the beat-up paperback in his hands the moment Charles' eyes opened.
“Hey, Charlie,” he said with a half-smile, tossing the book aside. He scooted the chair as close to the bed as possible and took Charles' hand.
“Wes,” Charles said, voice no more than a sigh. He felt exhausted, a deep ache in his bones. His head didn’t feel much better.
He hated hospitals; there were too many minds around lost in grief and agony. He focused his mind on Wesley's, who welcomed him in immediately. He didn't search Wesley's memories, simply sank into his familiar mind.
Wesley didn’t press him to talk, and Charles didn’t feel like speaking. They didn’t need words, not right now. He allowed himself to wallow in Wesley’s head for a while.
Eventually, Charles asked, "Where are Moira and the boys?”
“Outside the room, or in the waiting room. They wouldn’t leave without seeing you’re okay.”
“Yes, wonderful people, the lot of them,” Charles remarked with a small smile. He then sighed. “I’m all right, in the relative sense, I suppose.” If having his legs paralyzed could be called being “all right.”
Wesley, sensing his melancholy, gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m going to get you out of here as soon as possible, Charlie,” Wesley said, voice almost a whisper. “You won’t be paralyzed if I can help it, I promise you.”
Charles then remembered the times Wesley would stumble back home with cuts and broken ribs, and the next day, all that would be left, if anything, were bruises. Wax, he also remembered, the same wax he smelled on Wesley too often for his liking. A spark of hope ignited inside him, slightly easing the tightness inside him he’d felt ever since…Cuba.
“Your miracle wax,” he said, as Wesley had sometimes wryly called it. He leaned closer to his brother. “Do you think it will help me?”
“If it can heal bones in six hours, it can heal your spine. If not, I’m not going to give up until I get you walking again,” Wesley said, looking him dead in the eye.
He realized that he had Wesley’s hand in a near death grip, but Wesley was gripping his hand back just as tightly.
“God I hope so,” Charles gasped, blinking back tears. One breakdown was enough. But now that he was no longer completely devastated by his unfeeling legs, he was with everything else-the world’s response to mutants, Raven, Erik.
Wesley needed to know what happened. He sighed and reached out with his free hand to touch his twin’s temple.
Here. Brace yourself, Charles projected to him.
Bring it was Wesley’s reply.
Charles refrained from rolling his eyes, instead taking his own advice and bracing himself for the memories he was going to have to recall.
Despite his better judgment, he showed Wesley absolutely everything that’d happened in the past few months, because there was rarely anything they kept from each other.
How it all began, meeting Moira at the pub the night after Wesley had attended his commencement and congratulated him on his degree before rushing back to Moravia.
What he’d seen in Moira’s head, disbelief-tinged images of Miss Frost and the teleporter Azazel, and his excitement at the knowledge of more of their kind out there in the world.
How he and Raven followed Moira across the Atlantic to Langley, where he revealed the irrevocable existence of mutants to the CIA and persuaded them to allow him and Raven to travel with them down to Florida, in pursuit of the elusive Sebastian Shaw.
He showed him Erik, who had consumed so much of his thoughts since their first meeting: feeling Erik’s tortured, but beautiful mind; impulsively jumping into the ocean to stop the man from drowning; trying to stop the man from leaving out of the greedy desire to feel his presence; traveling across the country with him to collect Angel, and Darwin, and Alex, and Sean; chasing after Erik in Russia when he broke from the CIA to pursue Miss Frost; taking him and the others to Westchester after losing Darwin and Angel; training the children together; helping Erik find that point between rage and serenity and actually crying at the beauty Erik’s mind held deep within.
And Raven, their strong, beautiful, little sister: how he and Raven had seemed to be constantly at odds with each other recently; how she harbored great insecurities about her look; how he didn’t, couldn’t, comprehend why because he’d been too scared, too focused on keeping her safe, protecting her, until he’d stopped seeing her.
Finally, he showed Wesley what happened in Cuba, from Erik lifting the submarine out of the water to crashing on the beach, to Erik fighting Shaw and putting on that terrible helmet, to the feeling of a coin cutting through his head and struggling to keep Shaw’s mind from dragging him into the grips of death as well, to Russia and the U.S. launching missiles at them out of blind terror, to the stupid words he’d said to a man who’d suffered through the Holocaust, to the bullet deflected carelessly into his back.
Wesley took it all in quietly, not letting his reactions take control of him until Charles came to the end, where he was now, lying in a hospital bed in Miami without feeling in his legs, without Raven or Erik.
“I’m going to fucking kill that bastard,” Wesley growled after a moment’s silence.
Charles was not a bit surprised by his brother’s reaction.
“Please don’t. What has happened is as much my fault as it is his.”
“That doesn’t excuse him, not from everything he’s done,” his twin hissed, squeezing his hand tightly before pulling away and getting to his feet, as if he’d go after Erik right that instant. Charles opened his mouth to protest, to maybe call him back to his side, but then Wesley cut in, “Don’t defend him, Charles. I understand what he was going through with Shaw. Hurting the people who hurt you? That was me with Sloan and the shit he shoved me into with our dad, you know that. But you’re my brother, Charles, and he hurt you. He hurt you, and then just fucking left you, all of you, like sitting ducks on Cuba. There is no excuse.”
“Oh, Wes,” he sighed.
The weariness and pain that still weighed him down had to be taking a greater toll on him than he’d thought because Charles once again found his eyes stinging.
Wesley looked at him for a moment, and then Charles could feel the rage dissipating from him in seconds, leaving behind concern and weariness. Wesley sighed and returned to his bedside.
“Come on, shove over a bit,” he said, before stepping out of his boots and climbing onto the bed He helped Charles shift carefully over to give him room.
Charles wished he could turn himself onto his side, so that they could curl into each other like they used to do, like a pair of parentheses, shutting out the rest of the world. Instead, he contented himself with Wesley curling around him protectively, one hand held tight in his.
“Get some rest,” Wesley murmured into his ear. “Then you can get the doctor to let in MacTaggert and the boys. After that, we’ll send them back up to Westchester, and I’ll get you out of here and into the wax. Sound like a plan?”
“All right,” Charles agreed.
It’d been a long time since he’d had to rely on another, even Wesley, but right now, he was relieved to have someone to lean on, for someone else to be the responsible one while he tried to put himself back together.
He fell asleep again to the murmur of Wesley’s thoughts wrapped around his own.
Chapter 3 - Wesley
Pairing: Charles/Erik (eventually)
Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 989
Warnings: explicit language
Summary: Wesley didn’t want much out of life, but what he wanted the most was for Charles and Raven to be safe and happy. So he was rightfully displeased when he heard the message left on his emergency line, and by someone distinctly not Charles or Raven. (XMFC/Wanted crossover)
Notes: I just loved the idea of Charles and Wesley being twins and Wesley flipping out when he finds out someone hurt his brother, and suddenly, I couldn't resist writing this.
It isn't beta'd because I didn't want to trouble her with this just yet with everything else I've piled on her. Also, I'm not quite sure where this is all headed, but we'll see. I'm aiming for a fix-it, but that's if Wesley will ever let Erik within a mile's radius of Charles...
Chapter 1
Chapter 2 - Charles
When he woke for the first time since being rushed to Miami, the most familiar mind in the world was next to him.
He turned his head to look.
His other half, his twin, had squeezed himself onto the narrow hospital bed and was staring passively up at the ceiling with arms folded on his chest and one ankle crossed over the other. There was a shallow cut on his face, just below his left cheekbone, and dark smudges under his eyes, but otherwise he looked well. A little worn on the edges, but Charles was used to seeing him so whenever his twin returned to him from wherever he needed to scamper off to for weeks or months at a time. Anger, worry and guilt tumbled over each other in his brother’s mind, but most important was the protective, boundless love they shared for each other, overpowering and soothing the physical and psychic ache in Charles’ own head.
“What the fuck did you get yourself into, Charlie? And who do I need to shoot?”
As crude as ever, but his voice was the most wonderful sound to Charles’ ears at the moment. Charles didn’t even have the will to chide him as he usually did.
“Wes,” he gasped instead.
His memories of the last few days crashed down on him, painful and oppressive like they’d crush his lungs. He inhaled, then exhaled sharply, tried to breathe steadily.
Wesley pressed himself to his side as carefully as possible, wrapped his arms tightly around him, and tucked Charles’ head under his chin. Charles pressed his face against his brother’s neck, breathed in the familiar smell of leather, gunpowder, and wax.
“Wes,” he said again, because his brother was here, right when he needed him the most, like always, and he could feel the sobs threatening to start, the tightness in his throat.
He hated that he couldn’t feel Wesley’s legs pressed against his own.
“I’m here, Charles.”
Wesley didn’t promise to stay, didn’t promise to look after him.
He didn’t need to.
Charles fell asleep again a little later, the skin where his brother’s neck joined shoulder wet with his tears.
Unsurprisingly, Wesley was still there when Charles woke again, though seated properly in a chair this time. Charles stifled the childish impulse to ask Wesley to climb back onto the bed with him.
Wesley looked up from the beat-up paperback in his hands the moment Charles' eyes opened.
“Hey, Charlie,” he said with a half-smile, tossing the book aside. He scooted the chair as close to the bed as possible and took Charles' hand.
“Wes,” Charles said, voice no more than a sigh. He felt exhausted, a deep ache in his bones. His head didn’t feel much better.
He hated hospitals; there were too many minds around lost in grief and agony. He focused his mind on Wesley's, who welcomed him in immediately. He didn't search Wesley's memories, simply sank into his familiar mind.
Wesley didn’t press him to talk, and Charles didn’t feel like speaking. They didn’t need words, not right now. He allowed himself to wallow in Wesley’s head for a while.
Eventually, Charles asked, "Where are Moira and the boys?”
“Outside the room, or in the waiting room. They wouldn’t leave without seeing you’re okay.”
“Yes, wonderful people, the lot of them,” Charles remarked with a small smile. He then sighed. “I’m all right, in the relative sense, I suppose.” If having his legs paralyzed could be called being “all right.”
Wesley, sensing his melancholy, gave his hand a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m going to get you out of here as soon as possible, Charlie,” Wesley said, voice almost a whisper. “You won’t be paralyzed if I can help it, I promise you.”
Charles then remembered the times Wesley would stumble back home with cuts and broken ribs, and the next day, all that would be left, if anything, were bruises. Wax, he also remembered, the same wax he smelled on Wesley too often for his liking. A spark of hope ignited inside him, slightly easing the tightness inside him he’d felt ever since…Cuba.
“Your miracle wax,” he said, as Wesley had sometimes wryly called it. He leaned closer to his brother. “Do you think it will help me?”
“If it can heal bones in six hours, it can heal your spine. If not, I’m not going to give up until I get you walking again,” Wesley said, looking him dead in the eye.
He realized that he had Wesley’s hand in a near death grip, but Wesley was gripping his hand back just as tightly.
“God I hope so,” Charles gasped, blinking back tears. One breakdown was enough. But now that he was no longer completely devastated by his unfeeling legs, he was with everything else-the world’s response to mutants, Raven, Erik.
Wesley needed to know what happened. He sighed and reached out with his free hand to touch his twin’s temple.
Here. Brace yourself, Charles projected to him.
Bring it was Wesley’s reply.
Charles refrained from rolling his eyes, instead taking his own advice and bracing himself for the memories he was going to have to recall.
Despite his better judgment, he showed Wesley absolutely everything that’d happened in the past few months, because there was rarely anything they kept from each other.
How it all began, meeting Moira at the pub the night after Wesley had attended his commencement and congratulated him on his degree before rushing back to Moravia.
What he’d seen in Moira’s head, disbelief-tinged images of Miss Frost and the teleporter Azazel, and his excitement at the knowledge of more of their kind out there in the world.
How he and Raven followed Moira across the Atlantic to Langley, where he revealed the irrevocable existence of mutants to the CIA and persuaded them to allow him and Raven to travel with them down to Florida, in pursuit of the elusive Sebastian Shaw.
He showed him Erik, who had consumed so much of his thoughts since their first meeting: feeling Erik’s tortured, but beautiful mind; impulsively jumping into the ocean to stop the man from drowning; trying to stop the man from leaving out of the greedy desire to feel his presence; traveling across the country with him to collect Angel, and Darwin, and Alex, and Sean; chasing after Erik in Russia when he broke from the CIA to pursue Miss Frost; taking him and the others to Westchester after losing Darwin and Angel; training the children together; helping Erik find that point between rage and serenity and actually crying at the beauty Erik’s mind held deep within.
And Raven, their strong, beautiful, little sister: how he and Raven had seemed to be constantly at odds with each other recently; how she harbored great insecurities about her look; how he didn’t, couldn’t, comprehend why because he’d been too scared, too focused on keeping her safe, protecting her, until he’d stopped seeing her.
Finally, he showed Wesley what happened in Cuba, from Erik lifting the submarine out of the water to crashing on the beach, to Erik fighting Shaw and putting on that terrible helmet, to the feeling of a coin cutting through his head and struggling to keep Shaw’s mind from dragging him into the grips of death as well, to Russia and the U.S. launching missiles at them out of blind terror, to the stupid words he’d said to a man who’d suffered through the Holocaust, to the bullet deflected carelessly into his back.
Wesley took it all in quietly, not letting his reactions take control of him until Charles came to the end, where he was now, lying in a hospital bed in Miami without feeling in his legs, without Raven or Erik.
“I’m going to fucking kill that bastard,” Wesley growled after a moment’s silence.
Charles was not a bit surprised by his brother’s reaction.
“Please don’t. What has happened is as much my fault as it is his.”
“That doesn’t excuse him, not from everything he’s done,” his twin hissed, squeezing his hand tightly before pulling away and getting to his feet, as if he’d go after Erik right that instant. Charles opened his mouth to protest, to maybe call him back to his side, but then Wesley cut in, “Don’t defend him, Charles. I understand what he was going through with Shaw. Hurting the people who hurt you? That was me with Sloan and the shit he shoved me into with our dad, you know that. But you’re my brother, Charles, and he hurt you. He hurt you, and then just fucking left you, all of you, like sitting ducks on Cuba. There is no excuse.”
“Oh, Wes,” he sighed.
The weariness and pain that still weighed him down had to be taking a greater toll on him than he’d thought because Charles once again found his eyes stinging.
Wesley looked at him for a moment, and then Charles could feel the rage dissipating from him in seconds, leaving behind concern and weariness. Wesley sighed and returned to his bedside.
“Come on, shove over a bit,” he said, before stepping out of his boots and climbing onto the bed He helped Charles shift carefully over to give him room.
Charles wished he could turn himself onto his side, so that they could curl into each other like they used to do, like a pair of parentheses, shutting out the rest of the world. Instead, he contented himself with Wesley curling around him protectively, one hand held tight in his.
“Get some rest,” Wesley murmured into his ear. “Then you can get the doctor to let in MacTaggert and the boys. After that, we’ll send them back up to Westchester, and I’ll get you out of here and into the wax. Sound like a plan?”
“All right,” Charles agreed.
It’d been a long time since he’d had to rely on another, even Wesley, but right now, he was relieved to have someone to lean on, for someone else to be the responsible one while he tried to put himself back together.
He fell asleep again to the murmur of Wesley’s thoughts wrapped around his own.
Chapter 3 - Wesley