Still Here (X-Men DOFP, Charles)

[Dusty15]

This was actually a fic I started BEFORE 'X-Men: Days of Future Past" came out! I wrote the first part based on what I assumed Charles and Hank's relationship in the film would be. I turned out to be right! I've made some edits since then and added a great deal on afterwards. So, here it is-- a bit of a short fic with Charles at his worst and he's come down with the flu. And good ol' sweet Hank is still sticking around to deal with him and try to help. It's certainly not the happiest fic, but perhaps there's a shred of hope in it

-----

There was a beach...and a plane… And Alex was leaving the mansion. Glimpses of Angel and Banshee before they'd vanished....and then Erik in the courtroom...and Hank woke up drenched in sweat and panting for breath. Tears were fresh on his cheeks but the dream had not been his own.

He swung his legs out of bed and shrugged on his robe from its hook on the back of his bedroom door. Before he was halfway down the hall to the other wing of the house he could hear Charles. The sound of the cough was ragged and productive enough to be worrying.

Hank pushed open the bedroom door to find Charles sitting up on the edge of his large bed, shaggy hair masking his face as he shoved a needle into his arm with a shaking hand.

“It's the middle of the night,” Hank said.

“I didn't do a treatment before bed,” Charles rasped. “Sorry.”

“I guessed as much.”

Charles left the question of his shared dreams unspoken. Both men knew what Hank had seen.

Hurhh'tsghh!

Charles' shadowed face snapped forward with a tired sneeze not long after he'd removed the needle and set it back in its case on the bedside table.

“Bless you,” Hank offered, still lingering in the doorway.

“You can go back to bed,” Charles said, standing now on unsteady legs. He was wearing a ratty cardigan and pyjama bottoms, and he put his feet into a pair of slippers as he moved over to the sitting area in the large bedroom. His wheelchair sat untouched by the large bay window.

“I'm not going back to bed,” Hank said as he watched the Professor pour a sloshing glass of whiskey.

“Then fuck off,” Charles replied, sinking into an armchair with a wheezy cough.

“No.”

Furious didn't begin to cover it. Hank took a deep breath, willing himself to not change into his blue form. Charles didn't deserve any of this....he couldn't help it.

“You're not well,” Hank began.

“Yes, thank you for your keen observations, Hank,” Charles replied dryly, reaching for a tin on the coffee table.

“I don't think smoking is going to help matters,” Hank continued. “Perhaps not whiskey either.”

“I don't remember asking for advice.”

“I don't remember agreeing to stick around here to watch you become a total junkie either,” Hank snapped. His eyes flashed yellow for a moment as he threatened to lose control.

Charles shut the tin with a snap! and set it back on the table.

“You have no idea how this feels, Hank,” Charles said through gritted teeth.

“I think I have some idea,” Hank replied tersely. “Now sit there and I'm going to make us some tea.”

Charles didn't reply.

Hank left, shutting the bedroom door with slam, and leaned against the hallway wall, his eyes closed and fists clenched. He felt his body shiver with the beginning of a transformation but he swallowed the emotion and stopped it before his blue form shifted entirely. It felt less like anger and more overwhelming sadness. He hated seeing Charles like this. But he'd promised to protect the Professor and here he was, doing his best at it.

His best never felt like enough. In agreeing to help Charles regain the ability to walk, he'd taken away the man's mutant abilities. And upsettingly, Charles didn't care. The first blow in a series of events that had broken Charles was the arrest of Erik for a heinous crime and the disappearance entirely of Raven. And then there was Charles' lingering suspicion Erik had forced Raven to commit the crime herself. As the years went on, there was the escalation of the war in Vietnam and a growing hostility towards mutants. Charles had been forced to shut down his school, the only thing that had fully kept him sane and stable in the years since his split from Erik and the newly formed Brotherhood.

It had been a slow spiral to this point and how they'd got here, Hank couldn't quite remember. Now they spent their days in quiet in the empty, dark and dusty house. Hank worked in the lab on various projects, Charles 'worked' in his study on a steady supply of books, cigarettes, and liquor.

Early on, Charles had let Hank beat him at chess. Now the board sat untouched.

Hank made his way down the silent hallways to the kitchen; one of the only other rooms in the mansion that was still used. He put a kettle on and watched it boil.

When he returned to Charles' room, he found the Professor stretched out in the chair, a blanket now covering his legs and handkerchief on his lap. The glass of whiskey was still half-full, Hank noted with a twinge of hope.

“Here,” Hank said, setting the tea tray down and pouring a cup for Charles. “And a little honey and whiskey, okay?”

He splashed a small bit of Charles' glass into the teacup and added a spoonful of honey before passing it over.

Charles wrapped his hands around the warm cup and raised it to his lips, taking a sip.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

Hank nodded as he poured his own. Sometimes Charles seemed to know what a total pain he'd become.

Pushing aside a pile of dirty clothes, Hank took a seat on the adjacent settee and sipped his tea.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked after a minute.

“About what?” Charles replied bitterly. “The dream? Not really. You saw it.”

“Yes, but...”

“I'd rather not,” Charles emphasized. “It's in the past now. Nothing to be done.”

He set down his teacup with a sudden motion and his face shifted, turning to a look of confused anticipation. Raising his hands to a steeple over his nose, he spasmed with a sneeze.

Hurhh'tsghHHT!

Sniffling, he took up his handkerchief and wiped his nose with a heavy sigh.

“You should've stayed in bed,” Hank said. “Bless you.”

“I'm rather tired of staying in bed,” Charles quipped. “I've done my share of being an invalid.”

“Is it a cold or should we be dusting this room?” Hank asked, swiping his finger along a thin shield of dust on the coffee table.

“A cold,” Charles replied with a sniff. “It's fine.”

“I'd offer you something, but I'd want to test it against the serum first,” Hank said.

“It's fine,” Charles repeated.

“Alright.”

They sat in silence again.

“I could read us a book or something,” Hank offered after a moment. “Or we could play cards?”

A look of sadness crossed Charles' face as he contemplated the offer. Hank was glad he hadn't suggested chess.

“You can read if you like,” Charles said. “Not aloud though. Or you can go. I'm fine, I said.”

Hank rose and picked a book off a stack on Charles' bureau. Settling back down into the couch, he began to read. There was no way he was letting Charles talk him into leaving.

He was only a chapter in before he glanced up to find the Professor's head rolled back and his mouth hanging open in the expression of congested sleep. Hank shut the book and stood up quietly, extending a hand to touch Charles' brow. He found it warm, as he'd suspected. Uncurling Charles' fingers from the now-empty teacup, he put it back on the tray and carefully pushed the coffee table back to get a good angle at which to lift the sleeping man.

Even without changing to his blue form Hank lifted Charles with relative ease, making his way cautiously to the bed. He put the still-slumbering man down on the soft mattress and pulled up the quilts to Charles' chin, making sure he smoothed out the mess of sheets.

As Charles snored noisily, Hank took his place back on the sofa with his book. He'd promised to protect and stay with the Professor. Tonight, he was going to do just that.

-------

Charles slept like a brick for several hours while Hank read on the sofa and caught a bit of sleep himself. It was the wee hours of the morning when a hoarse groan caught Hank’s attention. Standing with creaking knees, he made his way in the dark over to Charles’ bedside and looked down at the man.

Gripped by fever, Charles writhed under the sheets as his face shone with a sheen of sweat. The man cried out, grasping at empty air. Hank put a testing hand on Charles’ brow and found it much hotter than before.

“Charles, wake up,” he said softly, giving Charles’ shoulder a light shake. “You’re dreaming.”

Charles thrashed violently, limbs tangling in the sheets as his hoarse voice cried out more urgently. Tears were starting to flow down his cheeks and as he fought the unseen demons, suddenly he woke himself and opened his eyes.

He gasped for air and then began to cough, curling onto his side and bracing himself as the hacks continued. Hank held Charles’ shoulder and rubbed his other hand along the man’s sweat-soaked back. The coughs faded, but Charles’ breath still came in gasps.

“I need….I need the serum,” he said weakly.

“You just had it a few hours ago,” Hank reminded him. “You’re fine.”

“I heard them,” Charles moaned, raising his hands to cover his face.

“You were dreaming. You have a fever.”

“I shouldn’t be able to hear them,” Charles replied, voice growing more panicked with each moment.

“It’s not the serum, Charles,” Hank assured the man. “It’s the fever. Lie still and I’ll go get you something to make it better, okay?”

“No!” Charles cried, sounding on the verge of total breakdown. “Please. Please don’t leave me.”

“Alright,” Hank said, sitting on the edge of the bed as Charles began to blubber. Great cries rose up and wailed from his mouth as tears began to fall. Red-faced and wet-cheeked, Charles shook with the convulsive sobs.

“I’m not leaving,” Hank said, reaching out to pull Charles’ to him. The man was burning up. “Sit up for me, Charles. We’ve got to cool you down.”

Charles struggled to get upright, sniffling and shaking as the tears kept coming.

Huhrh’tsGHIII!

Head bent into the sleeve of his sweater, Charles sneezed wetly. The crying certainly hadn’t aided with his congestion and his nose flooded, messing the cardigan sleeve and Charles’ upper lip. With a gurgly sniff, he wiped his face off, drying tears and snot.

Hank didn’t know how to make it better. This wasn’t the Charles he’d met all those years ago. They were too young for this kind of heartache.

“Charles, lift your arms,” Hank coached, guiding Charles’ cardigan and undershirt up and off. “There. That’ll be cooler.”

Charles leaned back into the headboard, tears slowing. He wiped his eyes with the back on his hand and muttered a soft apology.

“You’re ill,” Hank said. “Don’t apologize. Are you okay here for a minute while I go get some things?”

Nodding, Charles closed his eyes and sat quietly, sniffling.

“I’ll be right back,” Hank promised, standing from his perch on the bed and hurrying to the bathroom. He soaked two hand towels in cool water and returned to the dim bedroom with the damp cloths in hand along with a glass of water.

“Here we are,” he said, setting the water glass on the bedside table and holding out the towels. “We’ll get you more comfortable, okay?”

He draped a towel around Charles’ neck and pressed the other to his brow with a steady hand. As he sat, bracing the towel in place, Hank looked down the pale expanse of Charles’ torso. The man’s chest and stomach were light and dappled with a smattering of freckles. Hank knew that Charles’ back bore a different pattern; an angry, puckered scar from the bullet hole and a longer, more linear incision from spinal surgery. Now, years later, the scars were much less prominent than they’d been while Charles was still using his wheelchair...when the school had been open and everything had seemed brighter for a short while.

“I need more serum,” Charles groaned, pushing away Hank’s hand from his forehead. “Everything aches. My back…”

“It’s not the serum,” Hank repeated. “It’s the fever.”

Closing his eyes, face in an expression of pain, Charles shifted himself under the covers. One hand reached back and cradled his lower spine where the old injury site was.

“My bones hurt,” he said, teeth gritted. “Please, Hank.”

“I’m not giving you serum, Charles,” Hank replied. “It’s not that, I’ve told you. It won’t do anything.”

Charles scrubbed a hand wearily over his face.

“Get me a joint then. It hurts.”

“You’re not smoking with a chest cold, Charles.”

“I can’t do this, Hank!” Charles snapped, voice cold and angry. “Do something, for fucksake! I can’t even...ehh...hehh’TSH’GHTT!”

He sneezed, wet and rough, into his fist and snorted back thick congestion.

“Here,” Hank offered, passing over a handkerchief. Charles took it and honked his nose a few times.

“Should I run a bath?” Hank suggested. “Might help bring the fever down and make the pain less.”

Eyes closing, Charles made a noncommittal noise and shrugged.

“Right then,” Hank replied. “I’ll get that sorted.”

“No,” Charles said suddenly, grabbing Hank’s arm. “I’ll do it. Don’t worry about me.”

“What else am I supposed to do then?” Hank asked. “I agreed to stay here with you, Charles. Let me help.”

“I didn’t ask you to stay,” Charles replied, shifting to swing his legs out of bed and standing shakily.

If I didn’t stay, you might not have bothered to go on, Hank thought.

“I want to stay,” Hank called after Charles as the man made his way slowly to the bathroom. The door shut behind Charles and Hank heard him turn on the taps.

Sitting on the sofa again, Hank listened as the tub filled and the taps were turned off. There was no sound of a person entering the water. Hank waited...and waited. No sound.

“Charles?” he called softly, approaching the door. “Charles, are you alright?”

No reply.

He tested the doorknob and found it unlocked. Opening it, he looked first at the tub and found it empty. Charles was instead seated on the closed toilet, still dressed, with his head in his hands. His shoulders shook with silent cries.

Hank dropped to his knees at Charles side and put a hand on the man’s back.

“Hey, you’re alright,” he soothed. “What’s the matter?”

There were a million things Charles could have said. He could have told Hank he was grateful someone hadn’t abandoned him. He could have said having Hank around sometimes made him think of Raven and perhaps that hurt even more. Or that he was ashamed for acting like such a miserable arsehole but that he couldn’t manage to act any other way.

Instead he settled on “I’m so tired and everything aches.”

“I know,” Hank replied. “The bath will help. C’mon.”

He’d seen Charles naked a dozen or more times, especially when he’d first been injured and Hank had taken up extra shifts helping the Professor instead of the home care aides. And with the serum injections, Hank acted like a doctor of sorts. Between the treatments and the drinking and the drugs and all of it, Hank had seen Charles at his lowest now and had stayed. Nothing was scary anymore; it was just their normal daily life.

He helped Charles stand and remove his pyjama pants before guiding him to the tub and helping him get in. Charles sank down into the water, leaning heavily against the back of the tub and letting his arms rest on the sides.

“Better?” Hank asked.

“It’s alright,” Charles said with a sniffle. He reached up and pinched at his nose, looking irritated. “I’m all clogged up.”

“I can go down to the lab and run a few quick tests to make sure everything stays stable with a decongestant?” Hank offered.

“No,” Charles said, sighing. “It’s fine. I’ll just manage. It’s not -- hehh...eht’sGHT!”

He bobbed his head downward, spraying the surface of the water and making a mess of his upper lip. Groaning, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand and rinsed it off in the bath water.

They fell into the familiar lull of silence. Charles’ head leaned back into the rim of the tub as he lay with his eyes closed, breathing noisily through his mouth. Hank sat on the toilet in quiet vigil, attuned to every movement of the Professor.

As soon as he saw the goosebumps rise on Charles’ arms and the beginnings of a shiver, he grabbed a towel.

“Time to get out,” he said.

Charles grunted in disagreement.

“You’re starting to get a chill. Out.”

“What the hell do you even know about the flu?” Charles asked.

“I know if you’ve got a fever you don’t want the chills,” Hank said. “You’re shivering and it’s going to get worse.”

“Fine.”

Charles stood, sloshing water about and maneuvering himself clumsily out of the tub. His teeth were beginning to audibly chatter as Hank wrapped a towel around him.

“Dry off,” Hank said, draping another towel over Charles’ wet hair. “And back to bed.”

Charles scrubbed the towel across his body before securing it at his thin waist and reaching up to rub the second one through his mop of hair. By the time he was sufficiently dry, he was trembling with a chill, unable to keep his limbs steady. Hank disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a crumpled pair of pajamas that he’d found in Charles’ dresser and seemed clean.

Charles put the striped pants on and buttoned up the matching top with trembling fingers. He followed Hank back out towards his bed and found himself rewarded with a sharp tickle in his nose as he reacted to the change from the humid bath to the dry bedroom. He stopped, raising a sleeve to his nose and sneezing wetly.

Hurhh’tsh-GSHHH!

He swayed on the spot and was steadied by Hank’s ready arms which steered him right to a spot on the sofa.

“Sit. I’m going to put clean sheets on your bed,” Hank said.

“No, c’mon,” Charles protested but Hank was already stripping the linens off the four-poster, tossing them into the pile of dirty laundry on Charles’ floor. He disappeared out into the hall to fetch a fresh set while Charles let his head loll back on the sofa, his eyes drifting open and closed as he fought fevered exhaustion.

Hank remade the bed and had to call Charles’ name several times before the telepath realized he was being spoken to.

“All ready,” Hank said, indicating the waiting bed with the quilt turned down.

Charles climbed in, extending his legs under the crisp, clean sheets and allowing Hank to tuck him in. He hated feeling coddled...it was his job to take care of others...but he’d failed at that, hadn’t he? He rolled over, turning his back to Hank so the young man wouldn’t see his pained expression.

Hank’s hand settled on Charles’ back and began to rub small circles, ignoring the tiny strained sob that came from Charles’ throat.

“Listen to me,” Hank said after a moment as Charles felt the weight of the man sink into the mattress as he sat down. “I’m not leaving you, Charles. So just relax, try to sleep, and we’ll figure out a way to make things better when you get well, okay?”

Charles nodded, though he knew it to be an impossible task. What could possibly be made better?

Exhaustion was weighing heavy on him now, overpowering all the emotions and aches and everything else he carried on two small shoulders. Charles closed his eyes, falling off into a sleep made unfulfilling by his congested breathing which cause him to sputter and snort his way back awake only a short while later.

The weight at his side was gone. He craned his neck upwards to look for Hank, noting the bathroom light was on. He heard the creak of the medicine chest and the rattling of bottles. Hank emerged momentarily with a small container of Vicks chest rub.

“It might be expired, but I’m sure it’s fine,” he said to Charles when he noticed the man was awake again. “Didn’t sound like you were doing much actual breathing so I figured this might help.”

Charles coughed in agreement and took the bottle from Hank, too embarrassed to allow Hank to do the applying. He unbuttoned the top of his pajamas and took a small scoop of the thick, mentholated balm, rubbing it against his sternum and breathing in the fragrant vapours.

“Better?” Hank asked, taking the jar back and re-capping it.

Charles shrugged and settled back into the pillows with no spoken reply. He felt Hank push the stack of pillows up, propping him more vertically so he could breathe easier. Between the new position and the chest balm, Charles felt his nasal congestion slowly begin to ease, turning his nose from a clogged mess to a steady leaking faucet. He sniffled. Once. Twice. Again and again. He accepted an offered handkerchief and blew his nose wetly.

His sinuses disliked all the irritation of blowing his nose and inhaling the menthol. With a sharp prickle, they signaled rebellion and Charles kept the tissue at his nose in preparation.

Bending forward with a violent jerk, he sneezed harshly once and soon turned to a fit of ticklish smaller sneezes that didn’t seem to satisfy the itch.

Hurhh-TSGHH! Eh-TSHH! Nhh-TSGHH! Ehhh--hehh’tsgHHH!

His breath shuddered as he inhaled with a wheezy sound and exploded a final time with a more satisfyingly violent sneeze.

Huhhrrh-TSGHHHH!!

“Bless you!” Hank offered as Charles honked his nose wearily and tossed the sodden tissue to the floor with a sigh. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go test some medicine against the serum?”

“It’s fine,” Charles said. “I’ll just sleep.”

Part of him doesn’t care if he’s well or not.

He closed his eyes, his breathing easier and more even now. Sleep came fast once more and Hank sat vigil, watching the man as he snored quietly. When he was satisfied that sleep has a proper grip on Charles, he glanced over to the sofa, considering the option to seek a bit of rest himself.

Instead, he crossed to the other side of the bed and sat, opening his book again as he took his place opposite Charles, leaning against the headboard. He was only a few pages in when he slipped off to sleep himself, unaware of how tired he was.

----

The early morning sun woke Charles as it streamed in from a crack in the heavy drapes that lined his bedroom window. He opened his eyes, squinting in the dim room, and found Hank asleep at his side, head slumped to one side as he sat propped up.

A feeling of intense gratitude swelled in Charles. It was an emotion so much more loving than most others he’d felt in the past year and it felt foreign in his limbs. Hank wasn't going anywhere, he told himself, and for that he was intensely grateful, even if he’d been utterly terrible at expressing it.

Charles sat up and reached for a tissue to wipe his nose which was still runny and irritated. The act of sitting up alone was enough to cause his body distress and he coughed with a chesty bark and pressed a tissue to his nose in time to stifle a small sneeze. Nghh’tsgh!

Hank stirred, waking with a groan and stretching out creaking limbs.

“Good morning,” Charles said from behind his tissue shield.

“Hello,” Hank said wearily. “You got some sleep, I take it? I must’ve nodded off.”

“I did,” Charles replied. “Listen...Hank. I need to apologize. I was incredibly rude to you when you were just trying to help. I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t feeling well,” Hank said. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. How about some tea and porridge? I’ll fix it up and bring it here?”

The feeling of gratitude swelled again, catching Charles off guard.

“Um...sure. Yes. That’d be very nice, thank you,” he stuttered.

Hank rewarded him with a smile.

“Alright. I’ll be right back.”

Charles sat back against his stack of pillows, watching Hank head off to the kitchen. Maybe things weren’t as terribly dark as he’d made them out to be. At least he had one friend left at his side. For today, he decides, that’s good enough.

Edited July 18, 2014 by Dusty15

[sapphiremint]

Aww, I love this. The relationship between Hank and Charles is adorable. Very well written, I enjoyed it immensely.

*snuggles Charles*

[DaylightStarr]

Wow this was so sad! Sad but oh god so beautiful too. You have a way with words and I could see it happening so clearly. And yes, there was a glimmer of hope at the end. Something telling us that Charles wouldn't be this way forever. Thank you for sharing this.

DS

[ID2006]

EEEEEK! How did I miss this absolutely splendid piece of work.

[Anonymouse]

I loves Charles's raggedy attire. You always write the best sick Charles imagery.

“I don't remember asking for advice.”

“I don't remember agreeing to stick around here to watch you become a total junkie either,” Hank snapped. His eyes flashed yellow for a moment as he threatened to lose control.

Charles shut the tin with a snap! and set it back on the table.

“You have no idea how this feels, Hank,” Charles said through gritted teeth.

“I think I have some idea,” Hank replied tersely. “Now sit there and I'm going to make us some tea.”

Hank is hurting too, but he has to take care of Charles. All alone. :\ Poor things, I'd have taken care of them both. <3

Hank made his way down the silent hallways to the kitchen; one of the only other rooms in the mansion that was still used. He put a kettle on and watched it boil

idk why, but I love that he just stood there and watched it boil. It reminds me of a caretaker taking solace from their draining job to just do something mundane for a few minutes.

Hank nodded as he poured his own. Sometimes Charles seemed to know what a total pain he'd become.

Goddammit, Charles... but he's so lovable despite it all.

He set down his teacup with a sudden motion and his face shifted, turning to a look of confused anticipation. Raising his hands to a steeple over his nose, he spasmed with a sneeze.

Hurhh'tsghHHT!

Loved that sneeze and the dialogue that followed.

Hank didn’t know how to make it better. This wasn’t the Charles he’d met all those years ago. They were too young for this kind of heartache.

I can't handle those three sentences.

I love how attentive Hank is while Charles is in the bath. This was such a beautiful, intimate glimpse into their lives after First Class. They both went through so much and only had each other, though I'm sure they both felt very alone a lot of the time. I was literally on the verge of tears when Charles started crying (the first time, and then again in the bathroom), and how all of this pain and drama became their new normal. Beautiful story.

[snuffles]

Ever since I saw that movie I've been waiting hoping and praying for a fic like this. Just like this! Oooh the feels!! So lovely, thank you~~~!!

[Dusty15]

Thanks all I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'll aim for something a bit happier next time!