Do You Love Me

Fanfiction
Title:	Do You Love Me
Author(s):	Kat (ChristianGateFan/cgf_kat)
Date(s):	2011-2012
Length:	25 chapters, 113k words
Genre(s):	AU, Romance, Drama, Angst, Mpreg
Fandom(s):	X-Men: First Class
Relationship(s):
External Links:	FFnet AO3
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Do You Love Me is a Charles/Erik X-Men: First Class fanfic by Kat (username ChristianGateFan on FFnet, cgf_kat on AO3). Kat says it was inspired by the Fiddler on the Roof's song "Do You Love Me?", and was originally meant to be a one-shot.

Nergizka translated the fic into Russian.

Author's summary: Charles and Erik have been married for 25 years, thrown together by a mandatory post-apocalyptic pairing system attempting to increase and strengthen the population. They have seven children. They have never spoken of love, but change is on the horizon.

Reception

This story has everything and it is as much as real as how I imagine Charles and Erik in this situation. What I love most about this is that it is not solely focused on just them. It branches out to their family, to their community, to the entire world. With all those struggles, the lonesome and tragic journey that they had experienced, it seems you have no choice but to create this wonderful flow of the story. It was damn well-written. Everything's in place, it kept on flowing smoothly and I was being dragged until the end. Every character played their part, even the children and the babies. No one was insignificant.

If it were a YA novel I would already have given it a bunch of stars and be babbling about it all over Goodreads and going to my bookstore telling everyone who would listen, no, really, you have to read this book NOW.

The descriptions of the town, the ruins, of how they are trying to reconstruct after the nuclear disaster are exceptional, really. I can envision that world so easily that it amazes me.

The characters are also well built and strongly accurate, and though they are quite outside their canon world, you still managed to make their actions and reactions quite believable.

And the way you're picturing their feelings is wonderful. The slow mounting of those feelings, the way the characters are able to recognize them in other people but not in themselves is painful, and real.

I love the structure of the fanfic, the way you used the flashbacks and intersected them with the present time in order to get a more insightful view of their life and domesticity was well thought, and well conducted.

One mod on the fic rec tumblr "X-Men: First Class Fanfiction" said that "I remember reading this very early on on ff.net and I’m still very impressed by how well the nonlinear narrative works. "