Title: Boo, Young Sir, Boo
Fandom: X-Men: First Class (2011)
Characters: Charles/Erik
Rating: general audiences
Length: ~666 words
Content notes: FLUFF.
Author notes: For the "ghosts and gore" challenge in the 10th Fan Flashworks Amnesty. :D This is also the third part of my "Kittens and Rainbows" series, which is adorable fluffy Charles/Erik kidfic.
Summary: It's Halloween, and Charles and Erik are still boyfriends... and they've got a date to go trick-or-treating together! Erik's mother put a lot of work into his, but since leaving Kurt Marko, Sharon's been awfully busy, leaving them with only one option for a costume for Charles.



«I'm not doing it,» Charles sends. «I'm not coming out. You go ahead without me.»

"I'm terribly sorry," Sharon tells Edie and Erik. She catches her lower lip between her teeth for a moment, but very lightly, as if afraid she'll smudge her lipstick. It surprises Erik-- he'd always assumed all of Charles's personality traits came from his father, not his mother-- but when he really looks at Sharon's lips, he's looking at the image of Charles's, only twenty years older and on a woman.

Weird.

"I'm sure he's just running late," Edie says. "Charles?"

«My costume is stupid and this holiday is stupid! Why are we all going from door to door at the end of October anyway? It's freezing!»

«Charles,» Erik sighs mentally, «just come out. My mother worked really hard on my costume, don't you at least want to see it?»

Charles's pang of distress makes Erik look at Sharon again.

«Oh,» Erik thinks.

«Yeah.» But the door opens, and out steps Charles, in a white sheet-- white with some kind of white paisley print on it, no less-- two holes cut in it for his eyes. "Boo," Charles says flatly.

"What a cute ghost!" Edie exclaims. Maybe she was expecting something like this, or maybe Charles warned her ahead of time. Sharon looks down at the floor, her teeth nearly sinking into her lower lip again, but she stops herself this time before they can even dent the surface.

"I'm sorry I didn't have time for something more elaborate," Sharon tells Charles, reaching out and patting his shoulder. "But you know how hard I've been working these past few months--"

"I know!" Charles sighs. He does know, and he's told Erik all about it: finally, at the beginning of the summer, Sharon got up the nerve to leave Kurt Marko-- but the divorce settlement left Sharon and Charles with almost nothing, and Sharon's been working two jobs to keep Charles in his school program. Charles offered to apply for more schools, different scholarships, but Sharon, it seems, has become as stubborn as Charles himself.

It hasn't left her much time for costume work, though.

"You look great," Charles tells Erik. And Erik does, of course. Erik's a robot, and he's dressed in all sorts of metal bits and pieces, mostly leftover from his mother's garage. The two of them put everything together themselves; Erik has goggles decorated with hex nuts and long wrenches on his arms and legs to represent robot "bones". What's more, while a human boy his age wouldn't be able to carry all this, Erik's got the weight of it lifted with his ability. It makes him feel super-strong, and he loves it. He'd wear it to Claremont's School for the Gifted if he thought he could get away with it.

"I like the paisley stuff," Erik tries. Charles's head droops, but Erik reaches out and squeezes Charles's hand through the sheet. "It's like you're some kind of cool Victorian ghost."

"Boo, young sir, boo," Charles tries. For an instant, Sharon breaks into a radiant smile, and all three of them are caught by surprise-- but Charles is the only one who keeps looking at her. All of a sudden, he swoops forward and pulls her into an awkward, sheet-tangled hug, and Sharon hugs him back, her eyes closing.

"Have a lovely evening, Charles." Sharon looks at Edie. "Thank you so much for offering to take the both of them. I wish so much I could be there with you."

«She really means it,» Charles thinks at Erik, no little astonishment in his mind. «She wishes she could be there.»

«She's your mom!» Erik sends back.

«I know,» but it almost seems like Charles is just learning it for the first time, here and now, tonight.

"I'll have Charles back by eleven," Edie promises. "Come on, boys, off we go!"

Holding hands with Charles through the sheet is a little silly, but Erik doesn't mind. It's going to be the best night of trick-or-treating he's ever done.

-end-