honey honey what's your problem, Erik/Shaw, Erik/Charles
Title: honey honey what's your problem
Pairing: Erik/Shaw, Erik/Charles
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, dub-con/non-con, underaged, abuse, character death, violence
Content: For this prompt on the kink meme Uh, heed the warnings?
Summary: Erik's got a gun.
Humpty dumpty sat on the wall, humpty dumpty had a great -
i.
The gun was smoking. Literally, it smoked. Strange, Erik always thought it was a figure of speech. Ma started crying, "Erik, what have you done."
"What I had to," Erik said, and his voice sounded strange to his ears. Far away and dull, and maybe his eardrums had popped at the gunshot. That would explain it. "I'm sorry," he said, when she continued to cry. "I'm sorry. It's all my fault."
Rewind:
"What's your favorite fairytale, Erik? Mine was always Little Red Riding Hood."
"I'm too old for fairy tales."
"That you are, young man. That you are."
In the end, it hurt both more and less than he expected it to. More because at some point Seb's cock was inside him and it was huge and everything hurt, as if he were being torn apart by a battering ram, hard and relentless. I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house -
Wrong fairytale. This one involved three fingers and Ma's baby lotion and Seb informing him, "It hurts less if you just relax," and then, more firmly, "I'm serious, just relax, and please stop crying you're only embarrassing yourself. Be quiet and I'll let you come afterwards."
And Erik wanted to come, so badly, so he bit his lip and thought of all the metal items in the room, felt each one in turn and then when he'd finished started over again. One and a half rounds, that was all it took. One and a half rounds if you started from the doorknob to the paperclips on his study desk to the coin he kept tucked under his bed, the one that belonged to his real father. Who was dead, and who surely would never - after grunting and coming hard, pulling out so he could spew spunk all over Erik's belly - his dead father would surely never say, "Do you want me to make you come now," in a tone of voice so pleased with itself he might as well be offering Erik a pony, or a model train, and all the thousands of things he wanted before he wanted this, here in this room with sweat pooling against his spine and the heady stench of sex in the air. "Well, do you?"
"Yes. Oh please, yes."
ii.
Charles walked over, shook the hand of the police officer in charge and, despite Erik glaring at him from the backseat of the patrol car, opened his big, stupid fat mouth. But he was just a kid; perhaps they wouldn't take him seriously. But then everyone took Charles seriously, for all that he looked eight and dressed like he was eighty. Maybe it was because he looked eight and dressed like he was eighty. And always so well mannered as well. If only he weren't a busybody. If only Seb had drawn the drapes, and Charles hadn't decided to look out his window and into Erik's. But oh, Seb had done it on purpose, this Erik figured out as soon as he had stopped, mid-thrust, and said, smiling widely, "I do believe a little birdie is watching us, Erik." It was a test, and Charles would either pass or fail.
And Erik, he couldn't tell what he wanted more. Except: not Charles.
Not anyone, anyone else at all.
Erik knew it was all over though, when they drove him to the hospital first instead of the police station.
"Take your clothes off please."
"We'd like to check under your nails."
"Lie down and put your legs up, it's okay it won't hurt."
Oh and oh and oh.
The detective who arrested him originally coming up to squeeze his shoulder. There was a mixture of revulsion and pity in his eyes when he said, "It's okay, son. You'll be fine, I promise."
Erik started to cry. "Does she know? Please don't tell her - please, she can't know." Erik couldn't stand looking at him anymore, so he curled up and wept some more. "You didn't have to." He would rather have gone to prison. He would rather be dead.
He would rather be eaten, nothing left but bones and all his flesh and meat and blood warming the belly of a witch.
First thing he saw when they finally let him go:
His mom, waiting for him.
Charles, sitting next to her, holding her hand.
Ma started crying, and stood up to pull Erik into a desperate, back-breaking hug. Charles just looked tired. "I hate you," Erik hissed at him, unable to help himself. "Go away, nobody asked you to -" Ma pulled him in again, and the rest of his words were swallowed in the warmth of her chest.
Rewind:
"Yes sir, Herr Schmidt sir," Erik said, because Seb liked when they played these games, when he was an evil Nazi soldier and Erik was a scared little Jew boy. "Please," and he could see his own cock, straining against his belly. Aching for touch, for release.
"The hand or the mouth, Erik, what do you think?"
There was no right answer to this question, except for: "Whatever you would like, sir."
"The mouth then, because you've been so good tonight. Barely even cried."
It didn't take much, all Seb had to do was swallow him down and hollow his cheeks, and it was enough for Erik to come, to arch his hips and thrust and see stars and fireworks and all that jazz. "I really love how much you've grown to enjoy this, Erik," Seb said, once he was done licking his lips "I told you, you would. So much promise." His fingers trailed along Erik's stomach, rubbing his own come from earlier into Erik's skin. Erik squirmed, trying not to show interest so soon again. But he couldn't help himself sometimes.
They always showered together afterwards, and Seb always got hard again and made Erik get on his knees to suck him off, pressing his head back against the wall tiles and holding him still with his thumbs braced against the side of his cheeks. "I like that I can feel my cock on the inside of your mouth, my dear boy," Seb told him once, the only time he tried to knock his hands away. "Would you deny me the simple pleasures of that."
But that was back when Erik was still given to brief moments of rebellion, brief moments when he thought: if I don't want to be hurting my knees while water beats down on me and I'm choking on a cock, maybe I should try to stop it from happening.
He didn't have those moments anymore. Instead he had:
Seb lifting him up by his underarms onto the kitchen counter as if he weighed nothing and fucking him until he was begging for it while his mother slept off a headache in the upstairs bedroom.
Seb dragging him by the collar into his study and pushing him to his knees, so desperate to have Erik's mouth on him he almost forgot to close the windows.
In the family car, Erik riding him, buck naked while Seb was fully clothed, his fingers bunched into fists and his face rapt as Erik arched his back and moaned and tightened his thighs in the way that always drove Seb mad.
Instead he had all of this, and he said once, over breakfast and unable to really sit properly because Seb just had to throw him face down over the dining table early in the morning, just had to - "Hansel and Gretel, that's my favorite fairytale. "
"And why is that?"
"Well they cook her eventually don't they?" he paused, continued dreamily, "I bet she tasted good."
Ma laughed, and ruffled his hair. "And you were my innocent little boy not too long ago. Whatever are they teaching you in that school of yours."
"Nothing worthwhile," Erik answered truthfully. "Pass the maple syrup please?"
iii.
They sent him for counseling. Suspended sentence, a sealed record and mandatory counseling. Erik went through about five of them, in relatively quick succession.
The first: He looked fresh out of school, had beady eyes and a false air of concern around him that swirled like taffy in the room, thick and suffocating. He kept trying to get Erik in touch with his inner child. Which Erik didn't quite get, he was all of fifteen and he figured his inner child couldn't be all that different from his outer one. Eventually Erik just slumped in his chair and refused to speak for the entire hour, until he was told, "How can I help you, Erik, if you refuse to help yourself."
"I'm here because I have to be," Erik replied. "Why are you here?"
The therapist called Ma, and when she asked Erik why he was being so uncooperative, he merely said, "I don't like the way he keeps looking at me."
And that was the end of therapist number one.
The second and third lasted, respectively, three weeks and seven.
The fourth one, a middle aged man with smoker's breath -
Seb didn't approve of smoking, he thought all addictions were a sign of weak moral character: "Except for you, Erik. You're such a sweet addiction after all," he said, but his voice was faintly mocking and his smile was smug. Seb thought of him when he was there, or when it suited him, such as when he wanted to get his cock sucked, but not at all otherwise, this Erik knew for certain. Certainly he didn't think of Erik nearly as often as Erik thought of him. Even now, buried as he was, six feet under and yet not deep enough -
The fourth one Erik scared, he could see the exact moment when the fear hit his eyes, and: so that was how that felt like, then. He didn't last very long after that, told Ma some bullshit about how Erik needed someone more suited to help him, even as her lips thinned and she said, "That's what the last one said about you."
"No worries, Mrs. Shaw -"
"Lehnsherr."
"What?"
"Lehnsherr," Ma said. "I don't use Shaw anymore."
"No, of course not. Mrs, Ms. Lenhsherr - I recommend my friend to you, here, have her card. She's very good at what she does, trust me." He squeezed her arm, and she very deliberately stepped away. Erik almost smiled then, for all that he'd almost forgotten how, except when he was trying to disarm someone.
"Come along, Erik," Ma said, and grabbed his hand.
The fifth one kept flipping through her notes, ignoring him until Erik cleared his throat. "Did you want to say something, dear?" She didn't look up.
"No, I." Erik scowled. "I just want to move on with my life, why can't I be allowed to do just that?"
The woman looked thoughtful. "Do you miss him, Erik?"
This stopped him short. No-one had ever asked him this before. Mostly they assumed that he was happy - "Sometimes," Erik said, because he wasn't in the habit of lying about Seb, not anymore, not when everyone knew everything anyway.
Rewind
"What's your favorite fairy tale, Charles," Seb asked. Charles was sitting at the kitchen counter, glass of milk clutched in both his hands.
"I like them all," Charles said thoughtfully.
"Do you, now?"
"Well, mostly the ones where good triumphs over evil. But that's the way it should be, don't you think?"
Seb clapped his hand on the back of Charles' neck. "Mouth on you," he said, even as Erik shook. "I like that." A muscle in Charles' face twitched, and he moved away from Seb's touch. Strange, that. Everyone loved Seb: he was breezy and charming and always generous with a smile or a compliment or a friendly touch.
Correction: almost everyone, as Charles leaned even further away, and finally just stood up and moved to the other side of the kitchen table, as if he couldn't bear to be near him. He ended up seated next to Erik, offering him an irrepressibly cheerful smile. "Your mom is a great cook," he said. "I've never had better pancakes in my life. My mom refuses to even enter the kitchen, most days. I feel she might be allergic."
"What, to the kitchen," Erik said distractedly, watching Seb watching Charles. "Eat all the pancakes you want." He pushed his plate in Charles' direction. "Have mine. I'm not hungry anymore."
iv.
"We could move, transfer you to a different school," Ma kept saying, and even after a decade she hadn't lost her accent, and it always made her sound stupid, even though she wasn't. Less than, even though she wasn't. This, the third time she was called to the principal's office because her only son had been in another fight.
"I don't want to go to another school," he told her then. "I can take care of myself."
"It's not you I'm worried about," she replied, and when she leaned down to kiss his bruised eye, Erik flinched. Seb wouldn't have been disappointed in him, he would have been proud. He would have asked Erik to tell him exactly how hard he hit that boy, how badly he made him bleed, while biting his way across swollen flesh, marks above marks wouldn't be noticeable. Seb would have fucked him until he was sated and exhausted and his head wouldn't hurt so much and he could sleep.
Seb would also, probably, in that calm, condescending tone of voice that made Erik want to roll his eyes and pay rapt attention at same time, "You want to destroy your enemies, you don't get caught. And you make sure you do it thoroughly, so there's no chance of retribution." Erik didn't think he would, not with his broken clavicle and smashed cheekbone, but.
He snuck into the boy's room at night anyway, held a knife to the kid's throat while he slept. "Hey," he said, when the kid opened his eyes, some base instinct waking him up. His eyes widened when Erik said, "You should have just quit at calling me a faggot. I could have even tolerated the oven dodger thing, you inbred Irish mutt. But you had to insult my mother as well. Your mother may be a whore, that's probably where you get this from, but mine isn't. Now say you're sorry and I won't cut your balls off." The kid, surprisingly, started to cry. He also wet his bed, from the sudden acrid scent in the air, and Erik almost felt sorry for him.
"The world is a cruel place, Erik. There is no room for empathy, or kindness. Not for people like us. You'll understand why someday," Seb used to say. Erik didn't, not back when Seb was putting his money where his mouth was and displaying a distinct lack of kindness, and empathy, whenever Erik misbehaved. But it was different now. Everything was different now.
"Tell all your friends," Erik said, leaning down to whisper in his ears. He smelt like fear. It was intoxicating. Not so intoxicating: the splotchy red face and the snot. No wonder Seb didn't like it when he cried.
In the end, what happened was: The principal, frowning, because he never liked Erik, even though Erik was always unfailingly present and his grades were always above average - he could have done better, but Seb said, "The key is to blend in, and excel, but not so much that you draw attention to yourself." And Erik couldn't help but think of Charles, who seemed unable to keep from standing out. Not that it made him very popular, in the short amount of time he'd been at this school he hadn't made any friends at all, despite being alarmingly approachable and everyone being aware of his name at least.
"Listen, son," the principal said, and Erik pasted a distantly polite expression on his face. The man frowned at that; Erik knew he'd been working here too long to buy any sort of bullshit, but he didn't much care. "Jamie came in with his parents today, and explained everything to us. We take antisemitism very seriously, I'm sure you're aware." He cleared his throat. "Of course, violence is never the answer. You almost put him in hospital."
"So what does that mean," Ma said, and clutched at Erik's wrist. She looked tired, and she'd been crying the whole night. Because of her, and only that, the tears that came to his eyes weren't entirely false. He buried his face in her shirt and she said again, "Please. He's a good boy. It has - it has been a difficult year."
"I understand, of course. Which is why we've decided on a two week suspension instead of expulsion. So long as he stays out of trouble for the rest of the year." Buried in his mother's scratchy wool jacket, Erik wordlessly nodded his head. More discretion, less blunt force trauma. More: the quiet resolution towards removing all obstacles and annoyances.
"Thank you, Principal Taylor. Thank you so very much."
When Erik came home, Charles was standing at his bedroom window and staring into Erik's, his disapproval obvious even from this far away. No-one exuded disappointment quite like Charles. It was irritating as hell, Erik decided, to be judged by a fourteen year old, and he wouldn't stand for it. Still, as he pressed his palms against the window panes and leaned forward, he couldn't quite bring himself to close the blinds. Charles' eyes were so blue, even from this distance. You're a dire little snot, Erik thought viciously, and Charles reeled, as if Erik had spoken. "What the hell," Erik muttered, but Charles had already staggered back and disappeared from view.
Rewind:
Erik hadn't wanted a stepfather at first. Hadn't needed a replacement for his Dad, and the first time Ma introduced them, Erik sulked at the dinner table and only answered monosyllably whenever he was asked a question. It didn't matter that Seb seemed nice enough, it didn't matter that he bought Erik the exact model train that he'd wanted for so long but knew they couldn't afford. "Say thank you, Erik," Ma said, and she was trying, her smile was strained but she was trying.
"Thank you," Erik said sullenly.
Ma's smile faded, but Seb just grinned and said, "It's allright son. You don't have to thank me." He leaned forward and whispered, soft enough that Ma couldn't hear. "I am not trying to replace your father. But I care for your mother, and I would like to make her happy. She deserves it, wouldn't you agree?"
Erik had to nod his head at that. Ma deserved happiness, that was true.
The next time Seb came over he took Erik out for ice-cream, bought him a giant chocolate-chip mint cone, and he introduced Erik to the man behind the counter as "The very special young son of a friend of mine," and Erik blushed. Afterwards, they went for a movie, and as they were returning home Seb squeezed Erik's shoulder and said, "I enjoyed this outing very much, Erik. I hope we can be friends?"
Erik nodded his head mutely, and smiled, and when Seb held out his hand he shook it solemnly. "Friends," he said.
v.
When Erik turned sixteen, Ma baked a cake, the way she always did. She asked Erik if he would like to invite some friends over, or have a party, the ways she always did, and Erik said, "No, thanks," the way he always did. Only this year there was no Seb, and when he said no she looked so immeasurably sad he thought she was going to start crying again. There were two too many people crying in this house, all the damned time.
When she cut the cake and handed him a slice she told him, "We need to talk, Erik."
Erik dipped his finger in the chocolate icing and put it to his lips. "What about?"
"I don't like who you're becoming," she said carefully, oh so carefully.
Erik stilled, icing-covered finger halfway to his mouth. He'd tried his best, despite the occasional slip-ups, to be as discreet as possible. No fights, no truancy, he even went to his counseling sessions and kept to the same one for more than two months. He couldn't understand what more, exactly, she wanted from him, so he asked, "Did I do something wrong,"
"No, you didn't do anything wrong," she said. "I wish you would be angry at me, even once."
"Why," Erik said quietly. "There's nothing for me to be angry about."
She didn't say anything, and when he went upstairs to change he heard her crying, all the way up the stairs. Afterwards, he heard her on the phone, telling someone in German, so it had to be from her hometown, "He still doesn't trust me. I've lost him. I failed him, and now I don't know how to get him back."
Erik didn't know how to tell her: none of this was her fault; mostly he still blamed Charles. For it being the first year in five that he didn't have Seb, buying him a birthday present that a boy would want instead of what a mother thinks a boy would want. The first year in three that Seb didn't come up afterwards to give him his real present, the one Ma wasn't to know about. The glistening steel dagger, inscribed in German and, Seb said, "Taken from the cooling body of a murdered Nazi general discovered in Spain." The Luger - Seb said, "Guns are brutal but sometimes necessary, better you know how to use one than not."
The first year in two that Seb didn't say, his fingers trailing across Erik's cheek, "It's your birthday, so you get to choose. However you want me, Erik."
Erik caught a movement as he headed towards the bathroom, and of course there was Charles: it was as if he had nothing better to do than to stand at his window and wait for Erik to appear. Erik changed direction abruptly, changed course. Climbed out the window and was at Charles' doorstep in two minutes flat. "It's my birthday today, Mrs. Xavier," Erik said, when Charles' mother opened the door. "I thought Charles might like some cake." She was glassy-eyed and distant, he could probably have told her in great detail he was here to murder her only son and she would have waved him past with a polite, "That's nice, dear. Do clean up when you're done, you teenagers tend to leave such a mess."
Charles said, or correction, Charles tried to say, when he opened his bedroom door, but Erik shoved him in and slammed the door shut and kissed him, and he only managed to get out a muffled, "Mmff." To the bed, and Erik had expected at least some resistance, but instead it was just about the opposite. There was Charles, soft and needy and pliant in his arms, kissing him back desperately, ignoring that Erik was mostly just trying to fuck his mouth into submission, with little finesse and not much else. "Erik, oh," Charles said at one point, and Erik pulled away long enough to look at his face, flushed and wide-eyed and swollen-lipped. Erik tugged at Charles' belt and zipper, reached in to wrap his fingers roughly around his cock and all Charles did was shimmy and arch into it, his mouth a soft o of pleasure.
"Stop it," Erik growled. "Stop that. Turn over." He didn't wait for Charles' response, only grabbed his arms and forced him onto his front, tugging Charles' jeans down past his hips as he did so. Now Charles started to protest, he pushed back against Erik as Erik held him down, but after a while all the fight just left him, and he just lay there, panting slightly.
Erik draped his body weight heavily over Charles', and Charles was small, smaller than Erik had expected him to be under all those baggy cardigans and ill-fitting sweaters. "Come on," he said, and he ground his crotch against Charles' ass. "Tell me you want me. Tell me you want this. You're always watching me, always interfering with my life. I know this is what you want, right."
Charles' reply was muffled by the pillow, but then he turned his head, and Erik thought he would be crying, only he wasn't. "I just want," he said, and his lip trembled slightly, and Charles was always so self-possessed, even now, flat on the bed and absolutely nowhere to run to. He could scream, of course, but, "My mom won't come running. She's not like yours."
"How fortunate, then, that you were stuck with your parents and I got mine. We should have switched."
"I would have, if I thought." His eyes slipped closed, his body relaxing under Erik's weight.
"Are you afraid of me?"
"Do you want me to be afraid of you?"
"Maybe." Erik wasn't even hard anymore; he let Charles go and collapsed onto his back. "You ruined everything," he said, even as his throat choked up.
"I'm sorry," Charles said. He raised himself up onto his elbows, his gaze wide and earnest. Except maybe it wasn't so much earnestness after all, because surely no-one could be like this all the time and still be a real person. "My mother says I interfere too much, and that's why no-one wants to be my friend."
"That's okay," Erik replied. "I have no friends either." Charles' hair was sticking up in every which direction, like a brown-haired porcupine. "You look ridiculous."
Charles smoothed his hair down self-consciously. "Better?" At Erik's shrug he sighed and bit his lip. "I want - would you kiss me, please."
"I just did," Erik pointed out.
"No. A real kiss." He leaned forward and placed his lips over Erik's, soft and inviting. "Like this," he whispered, into Erik's mouth. Erik started to kiss him back, put his hand on the back of his neck for support and pulled him in tentatively. It was okay, right up to the point where he stopped being able to breathe and had to shove Charles away. Charles blinked at him, and he looked more shocked at this than he did at anything else that had happened previously, and Erik wanted to punch him in the face until he stopped. Instead he scrambled up from the bed and stalked into the bathroom, slammed the door behind him and leaned against it until his stomach stopped heaving and the spots behind his eyes disappeared. Charles would probably be outside, hovering and worrying in his quiet little way, but Erik couldn't bring himself to care. Not until the tentative knock and the soft, "Erik?"
"Go away, Charles," Erik said, but he turned his body around, pressed his palms against the door. It was unlikely, but he thought he could feel Charles' palms on the opposite side, pressed towards the same spot. "Please go away."
"No."
Erik put his forehead against the wood as well. All he wanted to do was sleep. Seb would help him sleep, but Seb was dead and Erik had a headache and there was no-one, no-one at all who understood what it was like. Who understood him. "I moved a coin," he said, finally. "I moved a coin, and then I shot him, but he was already dead. I don't know how. Seb knew. And you took him away from me. Why couldn't you have just stayed out of it."
"I'm sorry," Charles said again. And then he said: "I know."
Rewind:
The boy that lived next door saw them, was the problem. The boy with the hugely wet blue eyes and the perpetually red bitten lips who stood on the front lawn, the day they moved in next door, and waved at Erik brightly when Erik spied on the family from behind the porch railings. Who seemed entirely unfettered when Erik pointedly ignored his cheerful smile and ran back into the house. His room was the same one as Erik's, mirrored, and from his window Erik could see him bustling about, unpacking boxes with a studious sort of intensity. He glanced up the once, spotted Erik, and smiled again. Erik slammed the window panes shut.
He still showed up, incessantly, wanting to make friends, "I'm Charles, you have a lovely home Mrs. Shaw is Erik home I would love to show him this model plane I just bought."
"What a charming boy," Ma said. Her smile faded as Erik scowled. "You should try to make friends, Erik. It would be nice, perhaps?" Her voice was gentle, encouraging.
"Yes he really does seem like a lovely young man, doesn't he?" Seb said, and kissed her on the cheek as he smiled at Erik with a glint in his eye. "I agree, it would be nice if you made friends."
Pairing: Erik/Shaw, Erik/Charles
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU, dub-con/non-con, underaged, abuse, character death, violence
Content: For this prompt on the kink meme Uh, heed the warnings?
Summary: Erik's got a gun.
Humpty dumpty sat on the wall, humpty dumpty had a great -
i.
The gun was smoking. Literally, it smoked. Strange, Erik always thought it was a figure of speech. Ma started crying, "Erik, what have you done."
"What I had to," Erik said, and his voice sounded strange to his ears. Far away and dull, and maybe his eardrums had popped at the gunshot. That would explain it. "I'm sorry," he said, when she continued to cry. "I'm sorry. It's all my fault."
Rewind:
"What's your favorite fairytale, Erik? Mine was always Little Red Riding Hood."
"I'm too old for fairy tales."
"That you are, young man. That you are."
In the end, it hurt both more and less than he expected it to. More because at some point Seb's cock was inside him and it was huge and everything hurt, as if he were being torn apart by a battering ram, hard and relentless. I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house -
Wrong fairytale. This one involved three fingers and Ma's baby lotion and Seb informing him, "It hurts less if you just relax," and then, more firmly, "I'm serious, just relax, and please stop crying you're only embarrassing yourself. Be quiet and I'll let you come afterwards."
And Erik wanted to come, so badly, so he bit his lip and thought of all the metal items in the room, felt each one in turn and then when he'd finished started over again. One and a half rounds, that was all it took. One and a half rounds if you started from the doorknob to the paperclips on his study desk to the coin he kept tucked under his bed, the one that belonged to his real father. Who was dead, and who surely would never - after grunting and coming hard, pulling out so he could spew spunk all over Erik's belly - his dead father would surely never say, "Do you want me to make you come now," in a tone of voice so pleased with itself he might as well be offering Erik a pony, or a model train, and all the thousands of things he wanted before he wanted this, here in this room with sweat pooling against his spine and the heady stench of sex in the air. "Well, do you?"
"Yes. Oh please, yes."
ii.
Charles walked over, shook the hand of the police officer in charge and, despite Erik glaring at him from the backseat of the patrol car, opened his big, stupid fat mouth. But he was just a kid; perhaps they wouldn't take him seriously. But then everyone took Charles seriously, for all that he looked eight and dressed like he was eighty. Maybe it was because he looked eight and dressed like he was eighty. And always so well mannered as well. If only he weren't a busybody. If only Seb had drawn the drapes, and Charles hadn't decided to look out his window and into Erik's. But oh, Seb had done it on purpose, this Erik figured out as soon as he had stopped, mid-thrust, and said, smiling widely, "I do believe a little birdie is watching us, Erik." It was a test, and Charles would either pass or fail.
And Erik, he couldn't tell what he wanted more. Except: not Charles.
Not anyone, anyone else at all.
Erik knew it was all over though, when they drove him to the hospital first instead of the police station.
"Take your clothes off please."
"We'd like to check under your nails."
"Lie down and put your legs up, it's okay it won't hurt."
Oh and oh and oh.
The detective who arrested him originally coming up to squeeze his shoulder. There was a mixture of revulsion and pity in his eyes when he said, "It's okay, son. You'll be fine, I promise."
Erik started to cry. "Does she know? Please don't tell her - please, she can't know." Erik couldn't stand looking at him anymore, so he curled up and wept some more. "You didn't have to." He would rather have gone to prison. He would rather be dead.
He would rather be eaten, nothing left but bones and all his flesh and meat and blood warming the belly of a witch.
First thing he saw when they finally let him go:
His mom, waiting for him.
Charles, sitting next to her, holding her hand.
Ma started crying, and stood up to pull Erik into a desperate, back-breaking hug. Charles just looked tired. "I hate you," Erik hissed at him, unable to help himself. "Go away, nobody asked you to -" Ma pulled him in again, and the rest of his words were swallowed in the warmth of her chest.
Rewind:
"Yes sir, Herr Schmidt sir," Erik said, because Seb liked when they played these games, when he was an evil Nazi soldier and Erik was a scared little Jew boy. "Please," and he could see his own cock, straining against his belly. Aching for touch, for release.
"The hand or the mouth, Erik, what do you think?"
There was no right answer to this question, except for: "Whatever you would like, sir."
"The mouth then, because you've been so good tonight. Barely even cried."
It didn't take much, all Seb had to do was swallow him down and hollow his cheeks, and it was enough for Erik to come, to arch his hips and thrust and see stars and fireworks and all that jazz. "I really love how much you've grown to enjoy this, Erik," Seb said, once he was done licking his lips "I told you, you would. So much promise." His fingers trailed along Erik's stomach, rubbing his own come from earlier into Erik's skin. Erik squirmed, trying not to show interest so soon again. But he couldn't help himself sometimes.
They always showered together afterwards, and Seb always got hard again and made Erik get on his knees to suck him off, pressing his head back against the wall tiles and holding him still with his thumbs braced against the side of his cheeks. "I like that I can feel my cock on the inside of your mouth, my dear boy," Seb told him once, the only time he tried to knock his hands away. "Would you deny me the simple pleasures of that."
But that was back when Erik was still given to brief moments of rebellion, brief moments when he thought: if I don't want to be hurting my knees while water beats down on me and I'm choking on a cock, maybe I should try to stop it from happening.
He didn't have those moments anymore. Instead he had:
Seb lifting him up by his underarms onto the kitchen counter as if he weighed nothing and fucking him until he was begging for it while his mother slept off a headache in the upstairs bedroom.
Seb dragging him by the collar into his study and pushing him to his knees, so desperate to have Erik's mouth on him he almost forgot to close the windows.
In the family car, Erik riding him, buck naked while Seb was fully clothed, his fingers bunched into fists and his face rapt as Erik arched his back and moaned and tightened his thighs in the way that always drove Seb mad.
Instead he had all of this, and he said once, over breakfast and unable to really sit properly because Seb just had to throw him face down over the dining table early in the morning, just had to - "Hansel and Gretel, that's my favorite fairytale. "
"And why is that?"
"Well they cook her eventually don't they?" he paused, continued dreamily, "I bet she tasted good."
Ma laughed, and ruffled his hair. "And you were my innocent little boy not too long ago. Whatever are they teaching you in that school of yours."
"Nothing worthwhile," Erik answered truthfully. "Pass the maple syrup please?"
iii.
They sent him for counseling. Suspended sentence, a sealed record and mandatory counseling. Erik went through about five of them, in relatively quick succession.
The first: He looked fresh out of school, had beady eyes and a false air of concern around him that swirled like taffy in the room, thick and suffocating. He kept trying to get Erik in touch with his inner child. Which Erik didn't quite get, he was all of fifteen and he figured his inner child couldn't be all that different from his outer one. Eventually Erik just slumped in his chair and refused to speak for the entire hour, until he was told, "How can I help you, Erik, if you refuse to help yourself."
"I'm here because I have to be," Erik replied. "Why are you here?"
The therapist called Ma, and when she asked Erik why he was being so uncooperative, he merely said, "I don't like the way he keeps looking at me."
And that was the end of therapist number one.
The second and third lasted, respectively, three weeks and seven.
The fourth one, a middle aged man with smoker's breath -
Seb didn't approve of smoking, he thought all addictions were a sign of weak moral character: "Except for you, Erik. You're such a sweet addiction after all," he said, but his voice was faintly mocking and his smile was smug. Seb thought of him when he was there, or when it suited him, such as when he wanted to get his cock sucked, but not at all otherwise, this Erik knew for certain. Certainly he didn't think of Erik nearly as often as Erik thought of him. Even now, buried as he was, six feet under and yet not deep enough -
The fourth one Erik scared, he could see the exact moment when the fear hit his eyes, and: so that was how that felt like, then. He didn't last very long after that, told Ma some bullshit about how Erik needed someone more suited to help him, even as her lips thinned and she said, "That's what the last one said about you."
"No worries, Mrs. Shaw -"
"Lehnsherr."
"What?"
"Lehnsherr," Ma said. "I don't use Shaw anymore."
"No, of course not. Mrs, Ms. Lenhsherr - I recommend my friend to you, here, have her card. She's very good at what she does, trust me." He squeezed her arm, and she very deliberately stepped away. Erik almost smiled then, for all that he'd almost forgotten how, except when he was trying to disarm someone.
"Come along, Erik," Ma said, and grabbed his hand.
The fifth one kept flipping through her notes, ignoring him until Erik cleared his throat. "Did you want to say something, dear?" She didn't look up.
"No, I." Erik scowled. "I just want to move on with my life, why can't I be allowed to do just that?"
The woman looked thoughtful. "Do you miss him, Erik?"
This stopped him short. No-one had ever asked him this before. Mostly they assumed that he was happy - "Sometimes," Erik said, because he wasn't in the habit of lying about Seb, not anymore, not when everyone knew everything anyway.
Rewind
"What's your favorite fairy tale, Charles," Seb asked. Charles was sitting at the kitchen counter, glass of milk clutched in both his hands.
"I like them all," Charles said thoughtfully.
"Do you, now?"
"Well, mostly the ones where good triumphs over evil. But that's the way it should be, don't you think?"
Seb clapped his hand on the back of Charles' neck. "Mouth on you," he said, even as Erik shook. "I like that." A muscle in Charles' face twitched, and he moved away from Seb's touch. Strange, that. Everyone loved Seb: he was breezy and charming and always generous with a smile or a compliment or a friendly touch.
Correction: almost everyone, as Charles leaned even further away, and finally just stood up and moved to the other side of the kitchen table, as if he couldn't bear to be near him. He ended up seated next to Erik, offering him an irrepressibly cheerful smile. "Your mom is a great cook," he said. "I've never had better pancakes in my life. My mom refuses to even enter the kitchen, most days. I feel she might be allergic."
"What, to the kitchen," Erik said distractedly, watching Seb watching Charles. "Eat all the pancakes you want." He pushed his plate in Charles' direction. "Have mine. I'm not hungry anymore."
iv.
"We could move, transfer you to a different school," Ma kept saying, and even after a decade she hadn't lost her accent, and it always made her sound stupid, even though she wasn't. Less than, even though she wasn't. This, the third time she was called to the principal's office because her only son had been in another fight.
"I don't want to go to another school," he told her then. "I can take care of myself."
"It's not you I'm worried about," she replied, and when she leaned down to kiss his bruised eye, Erik flinched. Seb wouldn't have been disappointed in him, he would have been proud. He would have asked Erik to tell him exactly how hard he hit that boy, how badly he made him bleed, while biting his way across swollen flesh, marks above marks wouldn't be noticeable. Seb would have fucked him until he was sated and exhausted and his head wouldn't hurt so much and he could sleep.
Seb would also, probably, in that calm, condescending tone of voice that made Erik want to roll his eyes and pay rapt attention at same time, "You want to destroy your enemies, you don't get caught. And you make sure you do it thoroughly, so there's no chance of retribution." Erik didn't think he would, not with his broken clavicle and smashed cheekbone, but.
He snuck into the boy's room at night anyway, held a knife to the kid's throat while he slept. "Hey," he said, when the kid opened his eyes, some base instinct waking him up. His eyes widened when Erik said, "You should have just quit at calling me a faggot. I could have even tolerated the oven dodger thing, you inbred Irish mutt. But you had to insult my mother as well. Your mother may be a whore, that's probably where you get this from, but mine isn't. Now say you're sorry and I won't cut your balls off." The kid, surprisingly, started to cry. He also wet his bed, from the sudden acrid scent in the air, and Erik almost felt sorry for him.
"The world is a cruel place, Erik. There is no room for empathy, or kindness. Not for people like us. You'll understand why someday," Seb used to say. Erik didn't, not back when Seb was putting his money where his mouth was and displaying a distinct lack of kindness, and empathy, whenever Erik misbehaved. But it was different now. Everything was different now.
"Tell all your friends," Erik said, leaning down to whisper in his ears. He smelt like fear. It was intoxicating. Not so intoxicating: the splotchy red face and the snot. No wonder Seb didn't like it when he cried.
In the end, what happened was: The principal, frowning, because he never liked Erik, even though Erik was always unfailingly present and his grades were always above average - he could have done better, but Seb said, "The key is to blend in, and excel, but not so much that you draw attention to yourself." And Erik couldn't help but think of Charles, who seemed unable to keep from standing out. Not that it made him very popular, in the short amount of time he'd been at this school he hadn't made any friends at all, despite being alarmingly approachable and everyone being aware of his name at least.
"Listen, son," the principal said, and Erik pasted a distantly polite expression on his face. The man frowned at that; Erik knew he'd been working here too long to buy any sort of bullshit, but he didn't much care. "Jamie came in with his parents today, and explained everything to us. We take antisemitism very seriously, I'm sure you're aware." He cleared his throat. "Of course, violence is never the answer. You almost put him in hospital."
"So what does that mean," Ma said, and clutched at Erik's wrist. She looked tired, and she'd been crying the whole night. Because of her, and only that, the tears that came to his eyes weren't entirely false. He buried his face in her shirt and she said again, "Please. He's a good boy. It has - it has been a difficult year."
"I understand, of course. Which is why we've decided on a two week suspension instead of expulsion. So long as he stays out of trouble for the rest of the year." Buried in his mother's scratchy wool jacket, Erik wordlessly nodded his head. More discretion, less blunt force trauma. More: the quiet resolution towards removing all obstacles and annoyances.
"Thank you, Principal Taylor. Thank you so very much."
When Erik came home, Charles was standing at his bedroom window and staring into Erik's, his disapproval obvious even from this far away. No-one exuded disappointment quite like Charles. It was irritating as hell, Erik decided, to be judged by a fourteen year old, and he wouldn't stand for it. Still, as he pressed his palms against the window panes and leaned forward, he couldn't quite bring himself to close the blinds. Charles' eyes were so blue, even from this distance. You're a dire little snot, Erik thought viciously, and Charles reeled, as if Erik had spoken. "What the hell," Erik muttered, but Charles had already staggered back and disappeared from view.
Rewind:
Erik hadn't wanted a stepfather at first. Hadn't needed a replacement for his Dad, and the first time Ma introduced them, Erik sulked at the dinner table and only answered monosyllably whenever he was asked a question. It didn't matter that Seb seemed nice enough, it didn't matter that he bought Erik the exact model train that he'd wanted for so long but knew they couldn't afford. "Say thank you, Erik," Ma said, and she was trying, her smile was strained but she was trying.
"Thank you," Erik said sullenly.
Ma's smile faded, but Seb just grinned and said, "It's allright son. You don't have to thank me." He leaned forward and whispered, soft enough that Ma couldn't hear. "I am not trying to replace your father. But I care for your mother, and I would like to make her happy. She deserves it, wouldn't you agree?"
Erik had to nod his head at that. Ma deserved happiness, that was true.
The next time Seb came over he took Erik out for ice-cream, bought him a giant chocolate-chip mint cone, and he introduced Erik to the man behind the counter as "The very special young son of a friend of mine," and Erik blushed. Afterwards, they went for a movie, and as they were returning home Seb squeezed Erik's shoulder and said, "I enjoyed this outing very much, Erik. I hope we can be friends?"
Erik nodded his head mutely, and smiled, and when Seb held out his hand he shook it solemnly. "Friends," he said.
v.
When Erik turned sixteen, Ma baked a cake, the way she always did. She asked Erik if he would like to invite some friends over, or have a party, the ways she always did, and Erik said, "No, thanks," the way he always did. Only this year there was no Seb, and when he said no she looked so immeasurably sad he thought she was going to start crying again. There were two too many people crying in this house, all the damned time.
When she cut the cake and handed him a slice she told him, "We need to talk, Erik."
Erik dipped his finger in the chocolate icing and put it to his lips. "What about?"
"I don't like who you're becoming," she said carefully, oh so carefully.
Erik stilled, icing-covered finger halfway to his mouth. He'd tried his best, despite the occasional slip-ups, to be as discreet as possible. No fights, no truancy, he even went to his counseling sessions and kept to the same one for more than two months. He couldn't understand what more, exactly, she wanted from him, so he asked, "Did I do something wrong,"
"No, you didn't do anything wrong," she said. "I wish you would be angry at me, even once."
"Why," Erik said quietly. "There's nothing for me to be angry about."
She didn't say anything, and when he went upstairs to change he heard her crying, all the way up the stairs. Afterwards, he heard her on the phone, telling someone in German, so it had to be from her hometown, "He still doesn't trust me. I've lost him. I failed him, and now I don't know how to get him back."
Erik didn't know how to tell her: none of this was her fault; mostly he still blamed Charles. For it being the first year in five that he didn't have Seb, buying him a birthday present that a boy would want instead of what a mother thinks a boy would want. The first year in three that Seb didn't come up afterwards to give him his real present, the one Ma wasn't to know about. The glistening steel dagger, inscribed in German and, Seb said, "Taken from the cooling body of a murdered Nazi general discovered in Spain." The Luger - Seb said, "Guns are brutal but sometimes necessary, better you know how to use one than not."
The first year in two that Seb didn't say, his fingers trailing across Erik's cheek, "It's your birthday, so you get to choose. However you want me, Erik."
Erik caught a movement as he headed towards the bathroom, and of course there was Charles: it was as if he had nothing better to do than to stand at his window and wait for Erik to appear. Erik changed direction abruptly, changed course. Climbed out the window and was at Charles' doorstep in two minutes flat. "It's my birthday today, Mrs. Xavier," Erik said, when Charles' mother opened the door. "I thought Charles might like some cake." She was glassy-eyed and distant, he could probably have told her in great detail he was here to murder her only son and she would have waved him past with a polite, "That's nice, dear. Do clean up when you're done, you teenagers tend to leave such a mess."
Charles said, or correction, Charles tried to say, when he opened his bedroom door, but Erik shoved him in and slammed the door shut and kissed him, and he only managed to get out a muffled, "Mmff." To the bed, and Erik had expected at least some resistance, but instead it was just about the opposite. There was Charles, soft and needy and pliant in his arms, kissing him back desperately, ignoring that Erik was mostly just trying to fuck his mouth into submission, with little finesse and not much else. "Erik, oh," Charles said at one point, and Erik pulled away long enough to look at his face, flushed and wide-eyed and swollen-lipped. Erik tugged at Charles' belt and zipper, reached in to wrap his fingers roughly around his cock and all Charles did was shimmy and arch into it, his mouth a soft o of pleasure.
"Stop it," Erik growled. "Stop that. Turn over." He didn't wait for Charles' response, only grabbed his arms and forced him onto his front, tugging Charles' jeans down past his hips as he did so. Now Charles started to protest, he pushed back against Erik as Erik held him down, but after a while all the fight just left him, and he just lay there, panting slightly.
Erik draped his body weight heavily over Charles', and Charles was small, smaller than Erik had expected him to be under all those baggy cardigans and ill-fitting sweaters. "Come on," he said, and he ground his crotch against Charles' ass. "Tell me you want me. Tell me you want this. You're always watching me, always interfering with my life. I know this is what you want, right."
Charles' reply was muffled by the pillow, but then he turned his head, and Erik thought he would be crying, only he wasn't. "I just want," he said, and his lip trembled slightly, and Charles was always so self-possessed, even now, flat on the bed and absolutely nowhere to run to. He could scream, of course, but, "My mom won't come running. She's not like yours."
"How fortunate, then, that you were stuck with your parents and I got mine. We should have switched."
"I would have, if I thought." His eyes slipped closed, his body relaxing under Erik's weight.
"Are you afraid of me?"
"Do you want me to be afraid of you?"
"Maybe." Erik wasn't even hard anymore; he let Charles go and collapsed onto his back. "You ruined everything," he said, even as his throat choked up.
"I'm sorry," Charles said. He raised himself up onto his elbows, his gaze wide and earnest. Except maybe it wasn't so much earnestness after all, because surely no-one could be like this all the time and still be a real person. "My mother says I interfere too much, and that's why no-one wants to be my friend."
"That's okay," Erik replied. "I have no friends either." Charles' hair was sticking up in every which direction, like a brown-haired porcupine. "You look ridiculous."
Charles smoothed his hair down self-consciously. "Better?" At Erik's shrug he sighed and bit his lip. "I want - would you kiss me, please."
"I just did," Erik pointed out.
"No. A real kiss." He leaned forward and placed his lips over Erik's, soft and inviting. "Like this," he whispered, into Erik's mouth. Erik started to kiss him back, put his hand on the back of his neck for support and pulled him in tentatively. It was okay, right up to the point where he stopped being able to breathe and had to shove Charles away. Charles blinked at him, and he looked more shocked at this than he did at anything else that had happened previously, and Erik wanted to punch him in the face until he stopped. Instead he scrambled up from the bed and stalked into the bathroom, slammed the door behind him and leaned against it until his stomach stopped heaving and the spots behind his eyes disappeared. Charles would probably be outside, hovering and worrying in his quiet little way, but Erik couldn't bring himself to care. Not until the tentative knock and the soft, "Erik?"
"Go away, Charles," Erik said, but he turned his body around, pressed his palms against the door. It was unlikely, but he thought he could feel Charles' palms on the opposite side, pressed towards the same spot. "Please go away."
"No."
Erik put his forehead against the wood as well. All he wanted to do was sleep. Seb would help him sleep, but Seb was dead and Erik had a headache and there was no-one, no-one at all who understood what it was like. Who understood him. "I moved a coin," he said, finally. "I moved a coin, and then I shot him, but he was already dead. I don't know how. Seb knew. And you took him away from me. Why couldn't you have just stayed out of it."
"I'm sorry," Charles said again. And then he said: "I know."
Rewind:
The boy that lived next door saw them, was the problem. The boy with the hugely wet blue eyes and the perpetually red bitten lips who stood on the front lawn, the day they moved in next door, and waved at Erik brightly when Erik spied on the family from behind the porch railings. Who seemed entirely unfettered when Erik pointedly ignored his cheerful smile and ran back into the house. His room was the same one as Erik's, mirrored, and from his window Erik could see him bustling about, unpacking boxes with a studious sort of intensity. He glanced up the once, spotted Erik, and smiled again. Erik slammed the window panes shut.
He still showed up, incessantly, wanting to make friends, "I'm Charles, you have a lovely home Mrs. Shaw is Erik home I would love to show him this model plane I just bought."
"What a charming boy," Ma said. Her smile faded as Erik scowled. "You should try to make friends, Erik. It would be nice, perhaps?" Her voice was gentle, encouraging.
"Yes he really does seem like a lovely young man, doesn't he?" Seb said, and kissed her on the cheek as he smiled at Erik with a glint in his eye. "I agree, it would be nice if you made friends."