[fic] Dead Weight (XMFC; R)
Title: Dead Weight
Author: punahukka
A Gift For: pearl_o @ secret_mutant
Characters/Pairings: Charles/Erik + Raven
Rating: mild R
Length: ~930
Summary: The divorce doesn’t happen on the beach. Three Novembers and Decembers after Cuba.
November 1962
Charles doesn’t sleep for a week after Cuba; everyone else’s nightmares of sand and missiles and helplessness are a lump in his throat and a throbbing ache in the back of his head.
Erik sleeps; finally peacefully, at least for now.
They sleep together, and after the coin and the pain and the temporary solutions it’s the only thing that matters.
December 1962
“You don’t mind? Celebrating Christmas?” Charles asks somewhere along Erik’s raised eyebrows at the tree Alex and Sean drag in, Hank’s quietly but merrily hummed carols and Raven digging into the attic.
Erik shrugs. “Suit yourselves.” But Charles hears the undertone, traditions are dead weight to Erik, heavy mildly painful currents of memories and the struggle between nurturing and forgetting.
“We should have mistletoes,” Raven tells Charles when everyone else has gone to sleep and they’re having tea at the kitchen table, sorting out old Christmas decorations, brushing the fainted ribbons gently with their fingertips and laughing at the ugliest, most tasteless ones. “Or, the rest of us should.”
Charles fixes his eyes on her (her blue skin and red hair and yellow eyes, and of course he sees the beauty of it, but however hard he tries it’s still unnerving him), biting his lip in the effort of not reaching out with his mind. “Raven…”
“It’s alright, really,” she hems, tugging at the dress of a blond-haired angel figure before discarding it to the throwaway-pile. “It’s alright. And if it’s not, you know why.”
Charles would like to ask what has been the give-away, do the boys know, are they being so obvious, but he knows he doesn’t have to, Raven is the only one who has really picked up on it. “I didn’t plan this.”
“I think none of us did.”
Charles gets up to fill his teacup, knowing that he is a coward not daring to look at her while muttering “I know you had feelings for Erik.”
Raven actually snorts. “Honestly, Charles. Try again.”
He’s taken aback, but now he’s looking, he really isn’t too stupid to read his sister without his powers, now is he? “Erik accepts what you are. And I am an ass.”
“Closer. And speaking of asses…” She grins, and Charles throws a cookie at her.
“No. Just, no.”
“I never thought you’d be that type.”
“Me neither.”
Raven stands up as well, closing the distance between them and pulling Charles into a tight hug. “I love you.”
“I love you, Raven. And I’m sorry.”
Raven ruffles his hair and gives a quick peck on his cheek. “I’m a big girl. Now run to your lover.”
Not for the first time he thinks that she’s braver than he’ll ever be.
The lover is still awake as Charles crawls into bed with him, and the kiss goodnight turns into a slow lovemaking of things unsaid and feelings unnamed.
He doesn’t bring up traditions again, but when he leaves a menorah on the mantelpiece Erik does light the candles.
November 1963
Charles leans his forehead to the wall beside the phone. He might be able to reach across the continent telepathically, but it’s easier to call the traditional way, and he’s so tired. A nation shocked by the assassination of their president is more than able to give any mind-reader a migraine.
“Erik?”
“Charles.”
“Please come home.”
There is a silence on the line, and Charles squeezes his eyes shut, praying that it’s not an idiotic thing to trust Magneto and Mystique to be where they claim they are, that the phone number given to him belongs to a hotel room somewhere in California.
“We’re still tracking the mutant group. It might take a while,” Erik says, but Charles doesn’t hear the words, only the avoidance.
December 1963
“Do we still want the same thing?” Charles asks, biting his lip, and then biting Erik’s instead.
On top of him, inside of him, panting against his lips Charles wants nothing more than to trust him, and when they come together the only word vibrating in the air between them is love.
Lying awake staring at the ceiling they don’t dare to ask if it’s enough.
November 1964
He used to have a clear memory of the events of that day; the dreams and the choking fears and even more choking hopes have blurred it into a mess.
The gun pointed at Erik, the bullet meant for him changing its course and finding Charles’ spine instead.
Raven beside his bed in the hospital, tears running down her face but her voice steady as she tells him she has to go as long as she still loves him.
Erik not being beside his bed in the hospital. Erik (Magneto) coming to the mansion, wearing that damned helmet but guilt dripping off his every cell nevertheless. Erik almost saying the sweet words Charles is dying to hear but won’t let him say. Charles telling Erik to get the fuck out of his life.
December 1964
Charles cries for the first time after the accident when he receives a Christmas card from Raven wishing a better new year.
Erik comes on Christmas Eve, without the helmet, not paying attention to the cold enquiry of why he bothers, and sets up the chessboard.
When the game is finished Erik kisses Charles, picks him up from the wheelchair almost effortlessly and carries him to the bed, telling him that there’s one holiday tradition he wants to follow.
Charles pulls him closer, thinks of dead weight and wants to believe in miracles.