Work Text:
Deep in the silence of night with only the familiar progression of Hank’s dreams to distract him, Charles finds himself staring into the darkness, rubbing the huge swell of his stomach as he tries to force his mind to rest.
It’s an easy trick, on anyone else. Charles shifts against the mass of pillows, attempting to will himself into a comfortable position. And you thought your insomnia was bad at Oxford, he grouses to himself.
The baby kicks again, and he strokes over his abdomen in small circles.
Whoever it is in there, he or she is forever keen on fussing these days. “Only a few more weeks,” he says to the air. It seems far less ridiculous to speak to the ceiling, particularly when alone.
It’s normal, they say, to talk to your baby like it’s a person when you’re still pregnant. Maybe even beneficial, some psychologists are proposing. They might be able to hear you, they say; that they’re already learning the bond of family and the cadence of their birth-parent’s voice. That it might be necessary for the birth-parent—that the omega might be building attachment—and all Charles can do is try. “I’m feeling impatient, too, but we’re both just going to have to wait,” he continues, voice monotone. He can’t shake the thought. He’s talking to no one.
It’s impossible to think of it as anything, as anyone. Charles reads nothing, the only minds in the mansion the same as were here nine months ago, as were here years before that. Hank theorized he wouldn’t be able to sense the infant until it—she or he, Charles reminds himself, in a by-now rote practice—is born, he had some hypothesis about consciousness and Charles’s body and spatial fields that seemed to be half-metaphysics.
Half-bullshit, more like. Charles pushes up on his hands, feeling the strain in his shoulders and arms as he repositions, his burst of irritation compelling him to move. He’d been afraid at first that this would be too much on his body. Going so long dependant on Hank’s serum, his arms weren’t as strong at baseline. He had been sure that the weight of the baby would make it impossible to transfer from chair to bed.
But the change wound up being gradual, the weight coming on slow enough that he adapted.
“That’s the nature of things,” he tells himself. Who knows what this baby is—human or mutant, if it’ll grow up to be an alpha or a beta. Charles finds himself with the dark wish, again, that it won’t be an omega like him. “We adapt.”
Often Charles thinks it telling, that Hank didn’t come up with his hypothesis until Charles was months into pregnancy, until Charles was wondering about the wrongness of this mindless thing inside him. Perhaps it didn’t adapt, or couldn’t: he must have been just starting his heat when he got on that damned plane with Erik, so early that he could have ignored the symptoms. His heats had been so erratic on the serum, the sensations different since the accident, and then between the relaxants and the occasional drink… For a few years there, Charles would find himself a full day into heat before he realized it. Even his scent must have been off, or Hank too polite to say.
Which meant he didn’t realize for quite some time.
Who knows what all of that could do, what effect it could have? The serum, the pills, the drink…
Charles moves again, face shoved up against a pillow. He counts his breaths and thinks of nothing. The baby isn’t kicking, now. Maybe it fell asleep.
“Go to sleep,” he mutters to himself, “you can sleep, too, come on.”
He fully expects to stay awake—thoughts churning, baby kicking, back spasming without relief—until sunrise. But he must have be exhausted enough to sleep somehow, because when the window creaks open, it wakes him.
Cold air and the thoughts of another rush into the room.
At first, all Charles can feel is a surge of annoyance.
“What the hell are you waking me up for?” he growls, hefting himself up on his arms to glare at Erik. “Close the bloody window, you’re letting all the heat out.”
Shockingly, Erik complies. Without a word, he steps forward, sliding the window shut behind him, and that’s about when Charles’s brain catches up to the fact Erik’s in the room.
“Erik.”
“Hello,” Erik replies. More than anything else, his thoughts feel perplexed. “I take it you didn’t get my letter.”
The letter. That’s right. A few weeks ago, one had come to the mansion. The stamps were from Portugal, yet the stationary still had the stink of an alpha.
Charles hadn’t believed a word of it.
“No,” he lies, “I didn’t.” No need for Erik to think he was just moping around the mansion, pining away.
Erik doesn’t seem put off. He takes another step forward. His expression is guarded, but far softer than it was the last time Charles saw him.
Not that it’s hard, Charles thinks. Last he saw Erik, he was throwing about a stadium.
“You don’t look well,” Erik says, taking in Charles’s face, and Charles senses the moment he starts to track his gaze downward.
“You woke me in the middle of the night. While I’m pregnant,” he says, pushing the covers down, figuring it’s better to force the issue.
The shock in Erik’s mind feels strangely genuine.
It’s funny, Charles thinks. All this time, he’d imagined—Erik had to know, that it was just as much from that as from any other threat that Erik had ran once again.
He can sense Erik is about to speak. Charles doesn’t want to look that deeply, he doesn’t want to know what Erik’s thinking about this, about him.
“Why are you here?” he blurts out, even though that’s yet another answer he’s not sure he needs to hear.
I want you by my side—
Erik’s mind had always been so strange and glorious, a terribly beautiful thing; Charles had always felt faintly in awe by it. He knew Erik loved him, in the start. That he held him truly as an equal. But it happened that Charles never cycled into heat when they were first together. Beyond that, few of Erik’s thoughts had ever been what Charles thought of as alpha in nature, particularly not when it came to the two of them. If Erik ever wanted Charles as a mate in the traditional sense, he never gave any sign. It only ever left Charles wanting him more.
“I wanted to be with you,” Erik says. His voice is terse, like he expected that much to be obvious to Charles. “Reading what Raven’s been up to—it’s no life for me, living underground. I thought, together—”
He trails off, staring at Charles’s stomach. Charles adjusts again, leaning himself higher against the pillows so he can cross his arms over his girth.
Erik takes another step forward, cautiously. Charles can hear it as when breathes in, testing the air.
“Anyone ever tell you, you’re noisy when you scent?” Charles grumbles, embarrassed. Erik had done that a good deal in Paris, and while it’d been annoying he couldn’t help feeling a bit endeared at the time, particularly since he hadn’t thought he was in heat.
Ignoring him, Erik crosses the last of the distance in the room. Standing this close—even as dark as it is—Charles can see now how exhausted Erik looks, how much more lined his face is after even such a short time apart.
“But you don’t smell mated,” Erik says, and Charles tightens his hands, because God, of course that’s the first thing he’d fucking think, isn’t it? That Charles had pencilled in some time to roll over for another alpha. Unbelievable.
“That’s because you left,” he says, fists balled against his stomach, barely repressing the urge to take this all as an opportunity to take a swing at a different—but equally blameworthy—part of Erik’s anatomy. “It’s yours, Erik. Who the hell else’s could it be?”
“Logan’s,” Erik answers. He’s a bit quick with it, as if he’d spent time considering the possibility. Charles frowns. Erik had always been such a uniquely disagreeable person, Charles had never considered the obvious: that perhaps Erik disliked Logan merely for the fact he’s another alpha. Another alpha, hanging around an omega Erik apparently thought he had some bizarre not-mateship claim over.
“That’s absurd,” Charles tells him. That’s all he intends to say on the matter at first, but then words pour out of him, anger rising in his throat like bile. “You were there, weren’t you? Is it that bad, being tied to me, that you’d rather forget all about it? You knotted me, Erik, you did this to me and you left—”
“Don’t,” Erik interrupts, resting one hand hesitant and light against Charles’s shoulder. “Please. Charles, I didn’t know. I didn’t—I didn’t think you were—”
He trails off. In that way, he’s thinking; meaning in heat, the reality of Charles’s pregnancy still settling in his mind.
Exhausted, Charles can’t even shake off his touch.
“May I?” Erik asks, after a long and deeply uncomfortable moment. Charles shrugs, and Erik lets his hand fall, only to sit on the bed’s edge.
He’s near enough to touch, and Charles keeps a wary eye on him, but all Erik seems to be focused on, now, is Charles’s stomach.
“Can you sense her?” he asks. There’s something behind that, Charles is sure, the pronoun choice. Maybe Erik just doesn’t want to sire another male, and who could blame him. Charles met Erik’s kid. One of them, anyway, his mind supplies—for a man he claimed to know everything about, Charles knows dreadfully little about Erik’s past seasons. Who knows how many kids are going around, carrying Erik’s genes, and now here he is with one more.
“No,” Charles answers. Erik glances up at him, eyebrows raised. Charles looks away. “Not yet, I can’t. Do you want to—” he starts, gesturing toward his stomach, and naturally Erik does.
There’s so much hesitation in his touch, yet there’s familiarity in it, too. A kind of surety in the way Erik spreads his long fingers and his palm out over the taut fabric, feeling the warmth of Charles’s skin. Charles watches out of the corner of his eye, studies the way Erik’s face changes, as he breaks out a rare, unguarded grin.
Charles has seen him smile before, just as widely. Just as carefree. But it’s been years, and there’s something disquieting about it now.
It takes Charles a moment to realize why. For once, this rare joy of Erik’s isn’t directed at him.
“You planning to stay the night?” he asks, unsettled by his own jealousy. Erik is so very warm beside him, his scent calling, nearly luring Charles to sleep. Biology makes us such pathetic things, Charles thinks. His body wants for nothing more than to find sleep alongside his mate.
Erik’s fingers trace once again, wonderingly, over Charles’s stomach.
“If you would have me,” he says, “Please.”
Charles rests his hand against Erik’s, holding it still. He takes in a deep breath, lets himself feel centered in the pheromones and the note of apology in Erik’s thoughts, before he pulls away.
“Then you know where your room is.”
He almost expects Erik to storm out, but all Erik does is sit there, silent by his side.
I want you to stay, Charles thinks, the words heavy in his mind, the urge to press them at Erik nearly intolerable. Stay with me.
When Erik stands, Charles pushes himself up. He’s determined to see this through, to watch Erik leave.
“I do,” Erik says. He reaches his hand out again, but draws it back just as soon as he does. It’s a brief, indecisive motion, and Charles’s throat is tight with a painful affection. “But it's difficult to believe you'd have kept it intact.”
Charles breathes out, rubbing his eyes.
“Trust me, I can’t believe much myself,” he says, “When it comes to you.”
He doesn’t look as Erik leans down, and he doesn’t complain—much as he perhaps should—when Erik brushes his lips chastely against Charles’s cheek.
“Go to back to sleep, Charles. I’ll still be here in the morning.”
He steps back, and the bedroom door creaks open and closed. Charles doesn’t need to read Erik to sense his words are true.
They can start again in the morning, he thinks, he can sleep for now.
Easing back against the pillows, he stares once more into the darkness. His hands unerringly find his stomach, and brace against either side.
Erik will still be here in the morning. Charles watches the pale light of the winter sun start to bleed in through the window, no closer to knowing who—or what—it is, that Erik’s staying for.