Come Home (Cherik fanfiction)

Chapter Ten

Charles

"Raven, get off of the poor man so he can breathe."

To say he was tackled would be an understatement.

It was more like Raven had suddenly sprouted a secondary mutation that allowed her to be in two places at once. Charles only thought this because he could only see a blur between Raven and when she fell onto the bed, clutching him as she sat in his lap.

Raven nuzzled her face into the crook of Charles's neck one more time before she stood up more abruptly than she had sat down. Charles heard Frost mutter, "Sugar rush." but otherwise, they were all silent.

Raven looked like she could explode from happiness. It reminded Charles of when they were children and he would ask to play Ravne's favorite game.

Frost looked like . . . well, Charles couldn't tell her emotions right off the bat because her face was looking down at Raven, who seemed completely oblivious to her presence at all.

"Well at least I've acknowledged him since he's been here." She mentioned in passing, slowly tearing her eyes off of Charles and up to Frost's face.

Okay, so maybe not completely oblivious.

Frost -- Emma, because she was not hostile at the moment -- smirked. "Oh, Charles and I have had our pleasantries." She reached down and put her lips to Raven's ear. "If you're going to eavesdrop, darling, you should at least make sure you get to the interesting bits."

Charles blinked. Correction: he could only blink, as Raven turned her head all the way and kissed Frost's cheek swiftly.

"Well, at least I was able to break up the little pissing match." Slowly, Raven turned to Charles. "Wasn't I?" she tilted her head to the side. "Charles? You okay in there?" she tapped his forehead.

He cleared his throat and propped himself up further on the pillows.

"Well, first of all, I wouldn't call it a pissing match, Raven. Thank you for that, though. Even though I already sort of . . ." What did he do? What did Emma do? Why couldn't he reach out himself? What the hell was up with this room?

But Raven nodded before he was able to spew his confusion. "Well, you have always had a bit of a temper. I just figured I could help make your time here a bit more bearable."

Charles smirked. "Soften my hardship?"

She smiled sheepishly again and looked down.

Emma, who was now standing, sat down in the same armchair that had been on the other-side of the bed and leant forward. "Down to business." Her face was cool and passive now, and Charles amended that she wasn't used to the concept of an inside joke, having been privy to the use of 'looking' in on said kind of jokes most of her life. At least the room affected her too. "So, I'm assuming you have a lot of questions, then?"

Charles nodded urgently. "Can you answer them?"

Emma and Raven looked at each other for a moment and then looked back at him guiltily.

"Well," Raven started softly, taking his hand. "We can answer some. He was thorough, as you may well have expected. We have a list of ones that we can and can't."

"I assume you too will go through the 'can't's at tea-time tonight." Emma offered, looking surpisingly angry at the idea of him and Erik in the same room together.

Charles simply scoffed, too bitter to be reasonable. "If he thinks I'll be in the same room as him, alone, willingly for any amount of time within the next century, he's got to be on something."