Junior year, Raven realizes that majoring in social computing does not actually excuse her from the natural science credits she needs to graduate, and after a disgruntled bout of searching through the available classes, she picks the only one that fits around the rest of her schedule (blah blah blah something about evolution) and calls it a day.
The first Tuesday that class meets, Raven pulls out her laptop and opens up a Word document, intending to pay attention and take notes like the good student she really is (most of the time). Then the professor starts talking about some dude named Ussher and the age of the Earth, and Raven decides she'll check Facebook just once, and then she blacks out or something and comes to at the end of class when everyone starts rustling papers and packing up to leave.
Raven blinks, then turns her head and catches the eye of the guy sitting next to her, spotting the same look of vaguely traumatized boredom she's sure she's got on her face.
"Social computing," Raven says, pointing at herself and shrugging, and the guy grins.
"Civil engineering," he says. "Natural science requirements, huh?"
"Sucks," she says. "I'm Raven."
"Erik," he says, holding out his hand to shake hers in a firm grip. "Erik Lehnsherr."
Raven's never hit it off with someone quite as fast as she does with Erik; she's got other friends, and she loves them all, but it's a little like they're all friends with a different, individual part of her, whereas Erik just gets her as a whole. It's instinctive, effortless.
Raven likes her women with bite and her men a little goofy, and Erik's type seems to run toward guys more often than not, so they neatly sidestep the issue of "oh well no thanks I don't really want to date you" and move right on to being weirdly codependent best friends. Erik spends a lot of his time in Raven's room, because even with her half-hearted cleaning job, it's still a sight better than the disaster zone that is Erik's.
The first time he comes over, she notices him looking at the picture tacked up above her desk, and says, "Oh, yeah, that's me and my little brother. Charles."
"He doesn't look much like you," Erik inquires, in a way that indicates he'll drop it there if she wants him to.
"Yeah, step-brother, I guess—we're more each other's family than anyone else, though," Raven says, tugging her sweatshirt off as she speaks, voice muffled by the cloth. "My dad married his mom when I was eleven, so he was, uh, five—oh man, he was adorable, I was prepared to hate him and everything else in life but he was, like, tiny and shy and he thought I was the most awesome thing ever. Which I am, so."
Erik looks amused. Raven's pretty used to filling silences, and he never looks bored when she does, so she continues with the saga of the Charles and Raven show.
"But my dad, he's, what's the polite way to put this—he's kind of a dick. He doesn't like Charles, and I'm not sure he likes Sharon all that much either, and he might like me, but he's never done much about it," she continues, shrugging away the old sting of it—Raven doesn't believe in dwelling on things that can't be changed. "So he travels for work, and he's home probably a month or two out of the whole year, and Sharon's kind of really emotionally absent, so Charles is—he's mine to look after. He's my baby brother."
She doesn't really know why she's telling him all this, except that Erik has the rare gift of creating that inviting kind of silence that makes people want to spill their secrets in front of him. And he won't judge her for her rambling, inept confessions—the only way he can talk about his feelings is when he's drunk off his ass and near-unintelligible, and the fact that she's already seen him in precisely that state more than once means he has absolutely no room to talk.
"I don't have any siblings," Erik says, a note of wistful regret in his voice. He's not ignoring her story; he's just telling her that if she's done talking about it, he'll move on, and if she wants to talk more, he's there.
Raven grins at him, suddenly overcome by a rush of fondness, and she says, "Well, if you want one, I'm around. I've got a little bit of experience with gaining unexpected brothers."
Erik grins back, looking pleased and a little shy, and sprawls all over her bed for a Food Network marathon like he's been there forever.
Raven remembers this conversation later on, and god, does she laugh.
It's either that or get ragingly drunk, so.
When Raven brings Erik home over study break, because otherwise he'll just mope around on campus and tear his own hair out without her there to put things into perspective for him ("Even if you fail this exam, which you won't, one exam will not ruin your life forever, Erik. Don't be such a drama queen."), she's a little nervous about Charles meeting him. They're her two favorite people, after all, and she wants them to get along. Luckily, Charles seems to take to Erik instantly, and Erik tells Raven, later, "I don't remember what I was like at fifteen, but I don't think I was half as intelligent or grounded as he is."
It doesn't occur to her to be worried about them getting along too well until the third time she brings Erik home—Erik goes for a run early in the morning, comes back with his shirt dampened with sweat, pink from exertion, drinks deep from a water bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of one broad hand. Raven steals a glance or two, because a girl's got to get her entertainment somewhere, and then her gaze shifts slightly to the right as she catches Charles doing the exact same thing.
Huh.
Raven blinks in surprise, watches Charles go into silent fits while trying to act casual as he offers Erik some coffee, and shelves the issue until she's awake enough to mull over it properly.
When she does, she decides to let it go without saying anything for a while, see if it disappears on its own. Part of her wants to tease the hell out of Charles—older sister's prerogative, after all—while another part freezes in an instinctive, protective panic of "oh shit he's getting crushes on people what if he starts dating" that she manages to quash with some effort.
Months go by with Charles practically falling all over himself every time Erik looks at him (he's actually remarkably subtle for a fifteen-year-old, but no one knows Charles like Raven does, and to her he's basically shouting it from the rooftops), and Raven realizes that, yeah, if the crush is still going strong, it might not just go away on its own. It does make sense: Erik is nice to Charles in that intent, non-condescending way that means he actually likes Charles and isn't just humoring him, and he looks like—well. It's not really surprising.
There's still no way Raven can let it go without saying anything when she sees Charles wander into the kitchen after talking to Erik, looking a little despondent; her first instinct will always be to fix whatever's bothering Charles, and if she does it with a strange combination of sincerity and teasing, well, it works for them.
Raven can safely say that when she met Erik in junior year, she didn't expect she'd ever be having this conversation.
"You know I'm here if you want to talk about anything, right?" Raven asks gently, patting the chair next to her meaningfully. Charles visibly hesitates, before giving into years of habit, of Raven being his sole confidant, and sits down.
"So, I'm gay," Charles says, sounding kind of miserable.
Raven tucks him under her arm and says, "Okay. So are you looking for shock, because I can do shock, I'm good at that wide-eyed shit, or did you want a different—" Charles interrupts her by choking on a laugh, muffling it against her shoulder, and she continues, "Anyone in particular catch your eye?"
"You already know," Charles says, "of course you know, you just want to give me a hard time—"
"That's kind of my job, brat," Raven says very seriously, tugs on Charles's hair. Charles pokes her in retaliation, and then mutters after a minute, "Did you really have to find a best friend who looks like that?"
"What, did you want me to tell him I'm sorry, we can't be friends, you're just so hot that my little brother's going to have wet dreams about you and that's not— "
"Raven!" Charles says indignantly, the back of his neck turning a bright, scandalized red. Raven hides her laughter in Charles's hair.
"Well, as far as embarrassing crushes go, you could do worse," Raven tells him. "Remember Mr. Newman?"
"The one who taught English when you were in the tenth grade?" Charles asks, frowning a little. "Yeah, what does—oh, Raven, ugh, really?"
"Hey, it was a lot easier to forget that he's got bug-eyes when he was reading poetry to the class, okay?" Raven says, laughing even as she blushes a little. The embarrassment's worth it, though, for the way Charles's face clears and he grins, bright and sweet.
"Want to watch something with explosions?" Raven asks, nudging him, and Charles agrees fervently, "Please," and Raven silently pats herself on the back for handling that like the awesome big sister she is.
Though Charles gets better at hiding it, the crush obviously persists, stretching months until Raven blinks and looks at Charles and realizes that her little brother is, well, not really little anymore?
This is around the time that Erik starts looking back.
The first time Raven sees Erik almost drop coffee into his lap because Charles shows a flash of leg or something, she goes out that evening and get staggeringly drunk until she can wrap her head around the idea that her best friend might very well be dating her brother someday.
Someday being years and years into the future, of course.
"This is probably going to be a disaster," she tells the extremely hot bartender whose name is Angel, and who smiles at her in a sly way that Raven really, really likes.
"Another one?" Angel asks meaningfully, motioning toward her drink.
"Yes," Raven says, "yes, please, there is not enough alcohol in this whole bar for how drunk I need to get right now."
"Why don't we just start you with one and see how it goes from there?" Angel suggests, laughing a little.
The hangover Raven has the next morning does not exactly lend itself to thinking through this Charles and Erik business reasonably, but she waits a few hours and gives it her best go anyway.
So, okay:
Charles is her baby brother, and she likes to coddle him sometimes, and sometimes he likes to let her, but in all the ways that count, he's pretty old for his age. He's mature and damn intelligent and he knows what he wants from life, and stubborn enough that he won't settle until he gets it, and, well—
As weird as this all is, to be honest, she can't think of anyone who would be more careful with Charles than Erik. There's definitely no one she trusts more.
"Ugh, it's like they're trying to make my life as complicated as possible," she mutters to her empty apartment, but without any real irritation.
She's a little ahead of the curve, because she knows how Erik is when it comes to admitting things to himself, but she's almost certain:
It may not happen for a while, but it is going to happen, and when it does, Raven will be there to laugh at the two idiots she loves so well.
It takes a few months, but when Raven's right, she's right.
Erik doesn't keep secrets from Raven—she's the one he tells his secrets to, so she can offer her perspective and pull his head out of his ass, if need be. So when Charles is conspicuously absent from breakfast one morning, and Erik keeps fumbling with his fork and won't look her in the eye and there's guilt written in every inch of his body, Raven knows it's only a matter of time before he breaks.
It takes less than ten minutes.
"Charles kissed me last night," Erik blurts, and then looks like he'd like to punch himself in the mouth and shove the words back inside. "I, I was awake and he came down for water, and—"
"He seduced you in our kitchen?" Raven asks in what is definitely not a yelp, no, really, it's totally calm. "Way to pick the most inappropriate setting possible, Charles."
"There wasn't any seduction!" Erik says, eyes wide.
"Really?" Raven frowns. "Okay, then either you've got a lot more willpower than I gave you credit for, or Charles wasn't trying all that hard."
Erik just stares at her for a minute, wearing an expression that says he'd like for the world to start making sense again, please. That's another thing Raven can appreciate about this situation—with Erik's usual self-possession, it's rare that she gets to see him look quite so gobsmacked.
Erik rubs his face with both hands and mutters, "I need more coffee."
"You didn't blow him off, did you?" Raven demands. "Because he's had a thing for you since forever, and if you weren't—"
"I told him that I couldn't," Erik says, looking down at his hands. "That he's seventeen, and your little brother, and it, I mean, I can't."
"…So basically you panicked." Raven pats his hand and downs the rest of her coffee in one go. "You should probably work on getting over that now."
"Is this an alternate universe?" Erik asks with disbelief and not a little bit of agitation. "You're supposed to be threatening me with death and dismemberment, not—encouraging this."
Raven looks him in the eye, and asks him seriously, "Do you like him? Be honest with me."
Erik nods his head jerkily and runs a hand through his hair. "He's—bright," he says at last, visibly picking his words carefully, not quite looking at her. "And I don't mean intelligent, though he is. I mean—he's—" he trails off a little helplessly.
"I know," Raven says, because she does. Charles is just good through and through, compassionate and open, sweet with an unexpected wicked edge that makes him more real. She's been watching Erik get drawn toward Charles's flame for two years now, even when none of them knew where it would end up.
Raven shrugs, mouth quirking a little, and says, "I trust you. You'll be good to him."
"Because you'll murder me slowly if I'm not," Erik says dryly, tensed shoulders finally relaxing for the first time since they started their conversation.
Raven points at him and says, smirking, "I've always told people you're smarter than you look."
Erik grins at her for a minute, before it slides off his face and he gets serious again, and he says, "You—I'll wait until he's eighteen. I promise."
Raven eyes him and says wryly, "I know you mean that, and it's very sweet that you think it'll happen. But it's not really necessary, and I guarantee you Charles has different ideas."
"I'll wait," Erik repeats firmly, mouth set, all iron will.
Pitting Charles's stubbornness—coupled with the multi-part seduction strategy he's no doubt devised—against Erik's honorable intentions; if Raven doesn't think too hard about what it is that Charles wants and Erik won't give him yet, the thought of it is hilarious.
"Yeah, good luck with that," Raven says, smirking, and claps Erik on the shoulder.
"He's going to cave like wet paper," Raven moans, propping her head up on one hand, while Angel makes soothing noises and sets another drink in front of her and very kindly keeps her laughter to herself. "I know my little brother," Raven continues, "and he's got the, you know, the big blue eyes and the face and he knows how to use 'em. I never could tell him 'no' when we were kids. Erik doesn't stand a chance."
"Still think it's going to be a disaster?" Angel asks with interest, and Raven scowls a little.
"No," she sighs. "But I worry."
"Of course you're going to worry about him, he's your brother," Angel says. "But you do think they'll work."
Raven looks at Angel, and makes a face. "That's the problem," she says miserably, and then flaps her hand around, "no, it's not—it's not a problem, I trust Erik, to be honest I'm more worried about Erik being in over his head than I am Charles. I'm just—you know. I have to rearrange them into different categories. Move Erik from the 'best friend' spot to the 'guy whose balls I'm obligated to threaten if he hurts my baby brother' place. And now Charles is potentially going to be having sex, which, oh god, let's not think about that right now." Raven lets her head drop onto the table. "Really, I'm just getting all my whining out tonight so it's done with."
Angel considers this for a moment. "So what you're saying is that you're fine with it, you just really need to not think about it."
"Exactly," Raven says, pointing at Angel without lifting her head.
There's a silence, and when Raven finally looks up, she sees a slow, inviting smile spread across Angel's face before she says, eyebrow arched, "You want some help with that?"
Raven blinks, but regroups almost instantaneously. She's been flirting for months, so yeah she'd like some help with that. "That definitely sounds like a better idea than killing my liver," she says, grinning.
"You sure know how to flatter a girl," Angel says, voice dry with sarcasm, but her fingers curl around Raven's wrist for a brief, hot moment, and oh yeah, Raven's night is definitely looking up.
Raven doesn't know she's holding onto a last, tiny bit of worry until it's finally gone.
One day she walks into a room to find Charles backing Erik against a wall and kissing him firmly, and oh god she really didn't need to see that, thank you very much; but before she can cover her eyes and leave, Charles pulls away and looks at Erik expectantly, and Erik stares down at him with his mouth still a little open, and Raven doesn't quite manage to exit the room, something stopping her in her tracks.
Neither of them notices her there.
"Charles," Erik says at last, sounded a little exasperated and all kinds of fond and just plain happy, and Charles has a look on his face that says the same exact thing, and Raven feels something inside her chest clench, in a good way.
"Erik," Charles mimics with the same tone of voice.
"I thought we talked about the ambushes," Erik says, clearly trying to bite down on a grin and failing miserably.
"Just trying to remind you what you're missing out on by being so ridiculous about this waiting business," Charles says innocently. It's the way he sounded every time Raven would take him somewhere when they were kids in the hopes that his face would get her out of trouble (it never failed), so Raven knows exactly how innocent it isn't.
"You're going to drive me crazy, aren't you," Erik says helplessly, reaching out to thread a hand into Charles's hair, and okay, Raven really has seen enough at this point.
She leaves the room as quietly as she entered it, and shakes her head to herself at the realization that those two are going to be absolutely revolting together.
She can't stop smiling all day.
Three days later, Charles storms into the living room with a fistful of the condoms Raven had stuffed in every drawer in his room, his backpack, and under the sheets on his bed, looking pink and a little mortified, and he says, "Raven, what—"
Just because he wants to have sex doesn't mean he wants Raven to know he wants to have sex, apparently. Well, that just sucks for him.
Raven grins at him, all teeth. "You're welcome," she says cheerfully. "Now, I want to make sure you know how to use these properly, so go get me a banana and we'll do a demonstration."
Charles gives her an agonized look, says, "Please don't be helpful anymore," and practically flees the room, while Raven gives up and starts snickering helplessly at his face.
Hey. Whatever else happens, she's still his big sister.
This is her job.