Yay finals. Ugh. Glad I got this done before they started. But no worries. Thursday I'll be home for break! Yay time! :)
Anyhoo, thanks so much for all of you reading and reviewing, and I can't wait to hear from ya'll! Thanks so much for the support!
Chapter 6
Six Years, Four Months Ago
Erik finds Charles in the garden behind the house. It's small, but it's there, with a short wooden fence to separate it from the other back yards and gardens in the small space between the rows of houses.
He's been at work most of the day, but came home early at Jean's request to find the bedroom empty when Charles should have been in it. In bed.
"I tried to keep him in bed, but he wouldn't listen to me. He won't even listen to Jean, and Mom always listens to Jean…" Hank told him, as soon as he stepped into the house. Erik didn't say a word in response then, because he didn't want to snap at the boy. Hank is seventeen now, more than responsible, and Erik knows he really did try.
Jean is just outside the back door when Erik goes out, when he finds Charles. She's watching him, but not approaching, and the eleven-year-old glances up at Erik once he's beside her.
"Mom is worried…and sad. He's not gonna listen to anybody but you."
Jean had called him telepathically, not long ago, and Erik had hurried home. He sees why it was necessary now; it's bad enough that Charles isn't in bed where he's supposed to be—where his doctors told him to stay beginning more than a week ago—but Erik can read how upset he is from here without any need for telepathy.
Erik nods a bit, and pushes the back door open again a bit behind him. "Thank you…go on back inside now."
Jean hesitates, worried about her mother, but Erik glances at her sharply and she obeys. Erik shuts the door after her and focuses on Charles again.
At least it's the middle of summer. It isn't cold, and he isn't in any danger that way, but he really should be in bed. He looks awful, standing there at the edge of the garden, skin pale and dark circles under his eyes even though it's warm.
The pregnancy is draining him so completely this time, and it's scared the hell out of Erik from nearly day one. Six months or so now…at least two more to go, ideally…and the doctors are still holding to their optimism but Erik can see the doubt in their eyes and he knows Charles can feel it.
The mutation that allows Charles to carry children is destabilizing. They're sure of it now. But what exactly that means, they don't know. All they seem to be relatively sure of is that if Charles doesn't stay rested they could lose the babies. Both of them. There are two this time. That hasn't happened since Sean and Alex, and it can't be helping, but more than anything all they want is to deliver them safely.
Erik approaches slowly, and Charles doesn't look up. He doesn't need to look down to know what his husband is looking at, either. The small wooden cross in the ground at the back of the garden has been there for two years now. He's found Charles out here often enough since then, but right now he shouldn't be out here.
"You need to get back inside," he says gently, slipping an arm around Charles's shoulders when he reaches him.
Charles leans into him, eyes never leaving the small unmarked cross. "What if it happens again?" he whispers.
Erik holds him closer. "It won't. They'll be fine." He pauses for a moment. "You should really be in bed."
"I know, I just…I'm sorry. A nightmare…"
It isn't hard to know which one. Likely the same nightmare he's had too often in the past two years. Erik has had that nightmare too…remembering from his own point of view. It's never any easier, having that dream—remembering Charles's terrified face and the panic and sorrow in his voice when he woke that night in pain.
Erik, I can't feel the baby anymore! I can't FEEL it!
A miscarriage, early on but far enough along that Charles had begun to sense the beginnings of the small mind inside him. He'd felt it, begun to form a bond with it, and he'd felt it when it was extinguished.
I-I can't feel it, I can't—oh god, Erik the baby is GONE…!
Charles had been inconsolable for weeks—crying at night and barely holding himself together to keep up appearances for the children during the day. It broke Erik's heart to watch it all, unable to do anything but be there. It was the only point during their marriage that they had regularly slept on the same side of the bed…Charles curled in Erik's arms because he never would have slept otherwise.
Erik swallows and starts to tug him gently toward the house. "It's all right. Come on. Back to bed." But there's a quiet sob, and when he looks down again he sees his husband's red-rimmed eyes this time. "Charles…Charles, it'll be all right."
Charles is silent for a long moment, but finally he nods slowly. He doesn't say anything, but he turns to take a step toward the house. When he does he stumbles a bit, and though it isn't far inside Erik shakes his head and scoops him up anyway.
"Erik, I'm—"
"Not fine," Erik replies firmly. He carries him back inside, into the bedroom, and to the bed, where he deposits him gently, tugs his shoes off and pulls the blankets over him. "Now stay there, all right?" Charles nods weakly. "Do you need anything?" Charles shakes his head this time, until Erik starts to move off and he catches his hand.
"Wait…I lied. I'm sorry…"
Erik glances back in confusion, and Charles swallows and continues.
"I need…I want you to…please stay…" he manages quietly.
Erik's eyebrows go up, and he lets out a breath and nods slowly. At that Charles releases his hand, and he goes around the bed and kicks off his own shoes before lying down atop the covers on the other side. He's on his side facing Charles, and Charles shifts to his side as well, reaching for Erik's hand again. Erik lets him have it, squeezing gently when Charles takes it.
"Tell me again," Charles whispers. "Tell me everything will be all right."
"Everything is going to be fine. They'll be fine."
Charles nods again, seeming to believe it at least a bit more this time, and he falls asleep with his fingers still entwined with Erik's. Erik sleeps not long after that, forgetting even to change to or move under the covers because he doesn't want to wake Charles and doesn't want to leave him alone.
Six Years, Two Months Ago
Everything isn't fine. Charles is in more danger by the week, and by the seventh month they've moved him to the infirmary and told him he won't be leaving until the twins are born.
Not that he could. He couldn't really get up if he wanted to. He's too tired.
Raven brings Kurt and stays at the house with the other children so that Erik can stay with Charles, but they trade places for a day once or twice a week so that Raven can see her brother. Erik is glad to do it, because he knows seeing her cheers Charles up—makes it easier to deal with the fact that he can't get out of bed. He's stubborn, and it frustrates him.
It frustrates Erik, too. It isn't encouraging, seeing Charles lying there, and it doesn't help in keeping the gnawing worry away.
But the worry is justified. By the end Charles is unresponsive, and Erik doesn't understand the medical terms but he knows it's killing him. It was never entirely clear before—even to the doctors, if he gathers that correctly—but it's clear now that something is horribly wrong.
The emergency C-section goes badly. Too much bleeding, or something like that, and they don't have time to remove the uterus or anything else as they'd planned weeks ago when they were sure, at least, that it would be too dangerous for Charles to ever attempt pregnancy again—if indeed he could conceive again in the first place. They planned to make it impossible, but that proves to be impossible when the surgery goes to hell.
The twins, a boy and a girl, are fine, healthy enough, if small at nearly three weeks premature, but Charles falls into a coma. He's too drained, and he's lost so much blood. The doctors are sorry, of course, always sorry, but they tell Erik the truth anyway. Like it is.
They've done everything they can, they say, but they can't promise that Charles is going to live.
Erik doesn't leave his husband's bedside after that. Long days become more than two weeks, and they come so close to losing him more than once…
Raven comes when she can. Hank is certainly old enough to watch the younger children for a while, at least, and sometimes they all come.
The infants remain in the nursery at the infirmary, and no one asks Erik to make other arrangements. Not now. He goes to see Bobby and Kitty every day, and he's glad that he and Charles decided on possible names beforehand, so that they have names, and names that were agreed upon. He's glad he knows what to call them when he holds them, when he talks to them and tells them about their mother.
They're both beautiful. Beautiful like Charles. Erik's heart aches to think that they may never meet him, and Erik fights himself daily, not wanting to give in to tears but wanting to cry so badly at times he thinks he might die.
If anything happened to Charles Raven would help him with the children. Erik knows that. He wouldn't be alone. He would have help raising them, and they would get through it together—losing Charles.
But oh god, he doesn't want it to happen. He sits at his husband's bedside day in and day out, and there is so much he feels but he isn't sure what it all is himself. Even if he did he wouldn't know how to put it into words no matter how badly he wants to.
He supposes it doesn't matter now. Charles can't hear him.
When Charles wakes he doesn't remember what happened, at first. When he does remember it's incomplete, because the last thing he can remember at all is being in the infirmary, waiting for it to be time to take the twins, and he remembers being so tired…
He's tired now. Still so tired, but…he isn't pregnant anymore. What happened? Oh god, what happened? Are the babies all right? They have to be all right; he can't bear the thought that anything happened to them. He doesn't think he could survive that again. Feeling that small new mind go out inside him…it was worse than the war, worse than losing his parents, worse than anything.
He doesn't have the energy to move much, but he takes in the room—finds Erik asleep in a chair by the bed.
Erik looks awful; exhausted and unshaven and haggard, and Charles wonders frantically how much time he's missing.
Erik…Erik? Erik! Erik, wake up!
It's easier to call to him that way. Speaking aloud would take more work.
It takes a moment, but Erik's eyes blink open, and he rubs at them groggily, not seeming to realize at first why he woke.
Erik?
Erik's gaze snaps to him, and when blue-grey eyes find him Erik lets out a shocked breath. "Charles…"
The twins. Are they all right? Please tell me—
"They're fine. A boy and a girl. They're fine."
Charles swallows hard, sighs heavily in relief. Thank god. But then he frowns uneasily at another thought. How long was I gone? How much did I miss?
"A couple of weeks…" Erik sobs quietly and shifts quickly from his chair to the edge of the bed, taking Charles's hand. "Oh god, Charles, they didn't know if you were going to make it. We thought we were going to lose you. I—" He cuts off, and there are tears on his cheeks now.
Erik never cries. Charles can count on one hand the number of times he's seen Erik cry in the nearly twenty years they've been married. That surprises him enough, but what surprises him more is when his husband stretches out on the infirmary bed beside him and holds him without a word.
But he isn't complaining. He can feel from Erik how close it all came…how badly it went. Soon enough he's trembling, and Erik holds him tighter and Charles is still sore from surgery but he doesn't mind. Charles returns the embrace, burying his face in Erik's shoulder.
"Never go anywhere," Erik says finally, and his voice doesn't break but it comes close. There are so many emotions there, so many fragmented thoughts that Charles could try to decipher and part of him thinks he knows what he would find, but he's too tired now to figure it out.
Finally Charles uses his voice. "I won't," he says softly.
And this time he doesn't have to ask Erik to stay.
Now
It's been more than four months since the day that Raven's pregnancy was discovered, and she's nearly seven months along now. Spring will come soon but it is still rather chilly out, and everyone is still wary of letting Charles outside. He's been sick all winter—not awfully, but persistently—though that isn't unusual now. Still, they worry. Erik especially, just as he always has.
For weeks after Bobby and Kitty's birth Charles was still confined to bed, though the doctors let Erik take him and the twins home, and for those weeks Raven and Kurt stayed with them. With the children in school Erik couldn't care for Charles and two infants on his own. It was nearly a year before Charles returned to anything resembling the good health he'd kept up for much of his life, and it has never returned entirely.
Charles has never let that stop him, and no one but Raven seems to understand how much he wishes they would let him be.
Raven. Bless her. She doesn't bother him about how he's feeling unless it really is necessary. By the time she ever sees fit to actually mention it he knows already that he should be saying something anyway. Or going to the infirmary. At any other time she would rather come for a visit, sit him down and make tea, and insist that he not help her. That he can handle.
Erik's ever-present concern Charles is able to handle less and less now. It would be easier if his husband weren't so distant otherwise, but he is, and that only makes it worse. Erik is no less kind than he's always been, no less attentive, and he's just as wonderful a father as he's been from the beginning, but they've argued more in the last four months than in their entire marriage before now. Charles hates it, but he doesn't know how to fix it.
Raven is here now. It's afternoon and there's a warm cup of tea in his hands and outside Erik is playing with Bobby and Kitty in the last of the snow. Charles is at the window, watching them, and he's watching Erik laugh and his chest aches.
Erik hasn't smiled at him like that in months.
He pulls away from the window and trudges back to the table to drop into a chair opposite his sister.
"You look like you lost your best friend," she says gently.
Charles blinks up at her, and wonders if she knows how accurate that statement is. "What do you mean?" he asks innocently.
She gives him one of those no-nonsense looks. "You know damn well what I mean. Something's wrong between you and Erik, and it has been for a while. I was waiting for you to tell me yourself, without forcing it out of you, but apparently that's not in the cards."
He winces. "Raven, you know that I love you, but it really isn't any of your business."
"The hell it isn't. You're my brother, and it's making you miserable. It's every bit my business."
"There is hardly anything you could do…"
Her expression softens, and she lets out a breath and shakes her head. "Maybe not, but there's something you could do, and I don't understand why you don't do it. Twenty-five years, and you've never done it, have you? You've never told him. Why don't you just tell him?"
"Tell him what?"
She looks at him as if that was the most ridiculous question he could have asked. "That you love him. God, do I have to do all the thinking around here?"
Charles's mouth hangs open for a bit, until he shifts uncomfortably in his seat and takes a sip of tea before clearing his throat and trying to say anything to that. "I-I…I…Raven, I don't even know if that is what it is," he says softly. "I care for him, certainly, quite a lot, and I know he cares about me or he wouldn't worry so much, and he wouldn't still be here after all these years, but…"
He's holding the tea in front of him as if to protect himself from things he doesn't want to think too hard about just now, and Raven reaches to take it from him, set it down on the table, and then take his hands.
"Charles, trust me. You love him. He loves you. You're both just too damn stubborn to figure it out on your own."
He swallows and looks away. "Raven, we married the day we met and we were barely more than children at the time. The system isn't designed around love. It still isn't. You and Hank are lucky. Erik and I—"
"Are lucky too."
"I know that. I've always known that. It could have turned out much worse…"
"That's true. But I don't think it could have turned out better. You two belong together. It didn't take me long to figure that out."
If we belong together, why doesn't he want me? he wonders to himself.
Charles's health has never been quite improved enough for the doctors to be comfortable putting him through surgery again, to remove the womb the way they'd planned. There is still the danger of becoming pregnant, but they could be careful. Or…the Council doesn't allow contraceptives in any form to be manufactured regularly, not in this society, but the doctors could give him something. That much would be allowed; Charles knows because they've told him.
But Erik has never asked him to request anything. In more than six years he's never asked. They haven't talked about it at all. Charles thought they would be closer, after what happened…but after nursing him back to what health he was able to regain, it was as if Erik was afraid to touch him. The distance began.
But then Sean and Moira fell in love. Jean and Scott Summers became more than best friends. Erik's carefully built shell had finally begun to crack again.
Until the night of the party. That night in the bathroom when they came so close. Erik hasn't touched him at all since then—hasn't gotten too close in any sense of the word.
Damnit. There's a lump in his throat now, and he gulps it back convulsively and hopes Raven doesn't notice. If she does he can blame the extra female hormones still floating about inside him. Since they've never been able to remove anything they're still there, to some extent.
"Charles?" Raven asks anxiously.
"I-I'm fine."
"For a telepath you're an awful liar."
He chuckles weakly at that. "I know."
"What is it? What's going on?"
Charles shakes his head. "I wish I knew."
Erik catches a glimpse through the window, of Raven taking Charles's hands. He can't quite see Charles's face, but after twenty-five years of marriage he knows his husband is upset somehow, no matter how much he might not want to show it. It's in the set of his shoulders…the way he holds his head and the tentative way he's squeezing back at his sister's hands and the way he looks off after a moment. When he looks away from her Erik can see his profile—see the way his jaw is set, too.
He wishes he didn't have a feeling in his gut…wishes he didn't think he knows what they're talking about.
He saw Charles at the window earlier.
He hates the way they've been recently as much as he can tell Charles does, but he's at a loss for how to make it better.
He won't put Charles in any danger. It should be as simple as that, but it isn't, and he doesn't know how to have the conversation needed to explain. Erik is afraid of it. He's afraid of what it could lead to…what he might discover that way. He thought they could go on the way they've always been, and they've been fine that way in the past, they've always been comfortable with each other, but now everything is only getting worse by the day, and…
And he's tired of it.
The next morning Erik leaves for work at the same time he always does, but he isn't there long. He informs them that he won't be able to work today—maybe fibbing a little, claiming a cold and slightly fault control—and he turns around and goes home. Ororo is at school and Jean is finished now but today she's babysitting for neighbors. Bobby and Kitty are across the street with Marie.
Charles is alone when Erik makes it back to the house. He turns around in surprise when the door opens, a broom in his hands.
"Erik…what are you doing home? You only just left."
The broom is in front of him like a shield.
"I took the day off."
Charles blinks at him. "You…what?"
Erik crosses to him and takes the broom, not meeting any resistance because his husband is still too surprised. "Let me do that. You sit down." He starts to sweep, and when he looks up again Charles's face is suddenly rather stormy and he tries to snatch the broom back.
"Damnit, Erik, if this is about my bloody health—"
Erik keeps the broom away from him and chuckles. "You're being English. You're always more English when you're angry. I've always liked that accent, you know."
That freezes Charles in his tracks again. "What?"
This used to be England. Most of the mutants here were from here. Most of the residents here their age or older have an accent, of course, but to Erik Charles's has always been the most attractive.
He's never told him that.
Erik only shrugs, and Charles quickly recovers.
"You're trying to distract me; really, why are you here?"
"Do I need a reason to want to be at home once in a while?"
Charles's expression softens again, though he's studying Erik closely as if trying to decide if he's quite serious. "I suppose not…"
"Would you feel better if I gave you the broom back?"
"Yes, actually."
Erik nods and concedes, handing it over without a fight. Charles looks at him warily for a moment, but then takes it back and begins to sweep again.
They're both quiet for a long time after that, Charles cleaning and Erik trying to decide what he should do, but the silence isn't as uncomfortable as everything has been for the past four months.
The question is out of his mouth before he can tell himself it's a bad idea.
"Charles…do you love me?"
