A/N: I should be doing my summer projects. :(
Warnings: long drabble, Raven/Charles (Don't kill me, she totally had the hots for him!). Set when Raven & Charles are 15-ish. Starts out fluffy, ends bittersweet.
Disclaimer: If I owned X-Men, the beach scene would have ended with Charles and Erik running off into the sunset together. Naked.
Do you remember when we didn't care?
We were just two kids that took the moment when it was there.
'Another Heart Calls', The All-American Rejects.
y = mx + b. Substitute the slope for m and the y-intercept for b . . . now what's a y-intercept?
Raven looks up from her paper, preparing to ask Charles just what the hell this is ever going to be used for. She stops, however, and just looks at him, and waits to see how long it will take him to notice that she isn't working anymore. He is poring over a book, his nose literally inches from the page, and muttering under his breath. Charles had mastered algebra by age eleven, and here she is at 15, unable to work out a single problem on her own.
"Charles," she finally says, and he twitches slightly at the sound of her voice.
"Yes," he responds, flipping a page and looking up at her. Raven can't help but titter slightly at the dark shadow under one of his eyes – seeing Charles with a black eye shouldn't be funny, but it is, only because he's so proper and sweet all the time.
He narrows his eyes at her. "Why, yes, my eye does still hurt, thank you so much for asking."
Raven shrugs. "I told you, don't screw around in Cain's head. He's got meaty fists."
"You never told me that."
"I thought about telling you."
He rolls his eyes. "So maybe you'd like me to go in your head, then?"
She grins and stretches out one leg to poke his bony knee with her big toe under the table. "Someone's crabby this evening. We should stop studying and do something, oh, I don't know, fun."
"Studying is fun. Sometimes. Alright, occasionally."
Raven just looks at him. "You're weird, Charles," she says, tutting disapprovingly and rising smoothly from her chair, carelessly dropping her papers onto the floor. She walks over to the radio in the corner of the room, turning it on with a flick of the knob. "Music. We need music."
Charles grits his teeth and says, "Raven –,"
"Come on," she coaxes, twirling over to him, her pink robe fluttering around her ankles. She yanks the book out of his hands and nearly drops it – "God, why is this thing so heavy?" – and proceeds to tug him to his feet.
Charles shakes his head. "This is –,"
"Fun. Interesting. Not boring."
"I was going to go with ridiculous, silly, and annoying, actually."
She only grins and throws her arms over his shoulders, swaying to the beat of the music. "Shut up. You need to learn how to dance with a girl, anyway."
He doesn't move with her, but he does grudgingly put his arms around her waist. "No, I really don't."
She continues to sway, and gradually he gives in and moves with her. He'll never be an amazing dancer, but at least he won't look like a complete idiot. She smiles at him. "See, it's not so hard."
"Don't flatter me, I'm terrible. I know."
She rests her chin on his shoulder (if she keeps getting taller and he doesn't grow anymore, she'll have to tip her head to do that) and murmurs as the song changes, "You're not terrible. You'd steal any girl's heart dancing like this."
He chuckles, and his grip on her waist goes from awkward to easy, natural, comfortable. The way you would hold a sister, or a friend. Or maybe, just maybe, something more.
She turns her head then, and she doesn't even think about it – she kisses him.
His lips are soft and warm, and they part quickly and easily – but not to return the kiss, she soon realizes. Because he is pulling back, and opening his mouth to speak.
She looks away, embarrassed. "Don't say anything. Forget I did that, please."
He pauses, then surprisingly, he resumes their swaying motion. "Okay," he says. "Forgotten."
She smiles, but sadly, because she has caught sight of their reflection in the library's window. They are brother and sister, dancing together – but brother and sister would never move like this – nor would friends, not this closely, this slowly. She squeezes her arms around his shoulders, and sighs. That's all we are, she reminds herself. We're brother and sister, just not by blood. That's all it is.
She would later come to find out that that was all it would ever be, and it would take the end of their friendship for her to realize that it had always been just enough. But by that time, she would no longer be Charles Xavier's sister. That girl had never truly been real in the first place.
A/N: I actually kind of like this pairing. :) Reviews, please?