Fic: Man in Motion (X-Men: First Class / Wanted / Shame, NC-17)
title: Man in Motion
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 2010
fandoms: X-Men: First Class [movieverse], Shame, Wanted
pairings: Brandon Sullivan/Wesley Gibson/Erik Lehnsherr
rating: NC-17
notes: sexy-cracky crossover that got put together during a live-watch of Wanted together with madsmurf, with encouragement and cheerleading from yume-odori. Basically, modern AU, no mutant powers with the exception of Wesley Gibson, and what if Wesley and Brandon were an item, and they ran into a version of Erik while they're on a job?
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org.
“Teach me,” Brandon Sullivan says.
“I work alone,” Wesley Gibson says.
“Says who.”
Pause.
“If you don’t keep up with me, you’ll die.” Wesley ties his shoes on, sticks his H&K USP Compact back into his shoulder rig.
“Ask me if I really care.” Brandon looks up. “At least I’ll have had this - and you.”
That gets him a smirk. Wesley shakes his head, and crooks his fingers. “Fifteen minutes. Essentials only. Passport, IDs. I’ll supply the rest. One bag. Go.”
*
Brandon is an abnormally quick study.
The first thing Wesley does after putting him in the bath filled with hot water and the medicinal wax compound is look up this particular Sullivan family. What he sees there is...not good. Understatement of the year. No wonder Brandon feels the need to run all the time, no wonder he’s been slowly killing himself, silently going numb and insane. This is the sort of shit that is far beyond Wesley’s ken, and that’s saying a lot.
Wesley sometimes thinks it would be nice to feel afraid. Brandon is a disaster area in the making, a time bomb waiting to go off. Tell him to jump, he won’t even ask how high or how far - he’ll simply throw himself off the nearest edge. Easy as that. He really shouldn’t be hanging around with people as recklessly self-destructive - even he has some sense of clinging to life left. Brandon’s? Fucked off a long time ago. As dead and gone as the man he’d inadvertently left bleeding out in his wake.
But then, Wesley always has been the king of impulsive/idiot decisions. He’s going to have to see this one through.
And then there’s the sex, every deadly-delicious moment of it, every single time they do it: Brandon’s hands, his mouth, the things he knows. Eager to please in exactly the kind of way that Wesley craves, that makes it easy for Wesley to dominate him. He understands how Brandon came by all that knowledge and something in him growls in sheer bloody-minded possessiveness when he thinks, No one else. No sharing that. Mine now.
*
Brandon’s initiation, he learns after the first few times he’s laid out on his back, bleeding like a stuck pig, is nothing like Wesley’s. Sure, Wesley hits like a speeding train, and sure, Wesley knows way too much about how to kill a man with a knife, not to mention various and sundry other tools up to and including peanut butter and rats. What the actual fuck. But for the most part they stick with hand-to-hand combat, with guns.
Brandon remembers trying to tell people he’s not a fighting man. He gives up on that in the third sparring session, when he suddenly stops thinking and simply moves, counters half the blows being rained down on his head and then somehow manages to twist Wesley into some kind of chokehold. Pride-lust-accomplishment, that mocking smile like a goad and like a reward unto itself.
It pales in comparison, however, with the way Wesley touches him. After they’ve picked themselves up from the mats, after they’ve dealt with each other’s bruises - Brandon spends a dangerously long time hanging over the edge of release, imprisoned by the demands in those blue eyes, chained and held down by powerful hands. He begs for it, loud and shameless and needy, and every time he thinks he’ll fall Wesley yanks him back to reality, and laughs in his face.
When he finally comes, after Wesley leaves him completely strung out and mindless with desire, the release hits him exactly as Wesley would, and he spares a moment to be glad and thankful before he falls apart.
*
Seattle is rainy and damp and the fog hangs on their shoulders like grim death - but the job goes off without a hitch and Wesley runs all the way back to their hotel room, triumph like a touch-paper to his skin and senses, setting him alight. Twitching high of this success, of the idea of Brandon peering down his sniper rifle and crossing his shot with Wesley’s, pinpoint accuracy, and he’s already making plans when he shoves his keycard into the door and -
Someone else, Brandon’s in danger, and Wesley doesn’t think - he draws his handgun and puts the muzzle against skin and there’s a voice, urgent, whispering, “Don’t!”
Wesley blinks, and just barely manages to keep trigger discipline, and he looks, he really looks, he wills his heartbeat back down and it takes a while before his brain can catch up with him.
Because Brandon is in a chair, his own gun out, and pointed steadily at - at a man who looks almost exactly like him. Mirror image: the same bone structure, the same thin lips. The eyes are different, Brandon’s green to the stranger’s dark blue; as is the hair, Brandon’s auburn to the other’s brown.
Wesley looks from one man to another and snaps, “Explain,” to one or both of them.
“Erik Lehnsherr - Mossad,” Brandon’s doppelganger says. “We have been watching the man you killed for quite a long time now. He was suspected of money laundering - dealing in Nazi gold.”
Wesley snorts. “Nazis. Sure. He didn’t look a day over fifty.”
“We were trying to trace the trail back to his employers or his supporters until the two of you put bullets in his head,” the agent counters. “But clearly the matter is no longer any of our concern. It was kind of you to leave his associates to us; we shall continue our investigations from there.”
“None of which explains why you’re threatening my partner. Talk.”
*
Brandon smiles at Wesley, just the barest quirk of his lips, and it threatens to become more obvious when Wesley shrugs one shoulder and returns the smile. Partner is a good word. It means all kinds of good things.
He watches his double watch the silent exchange and - he knows the look in Erik’s eyes. He knows that particular tentative edge all too well. Interest, arousal, recklessness; it’s a look he’d seen in his own mirror, before this, before Wesley. Strange how it contorts this man’s features. Brandon knows, or at least he hopes, that he’s never looked as desolate as this - so much more alone than he used to be.
In the end, Erik sighs quietly and puts up his hands. “I don’t suppose I can apologize for the inconvenience and you’ll let me go.”
Like a magnet to the North Pole, Brandon’s eyes swing up to Wesley’s. “I’m really just the junior partner here, and I’m just guessing,” Brandon says, and watches as Wesley turns away and hides a grin. “But it’s more than just a matter of apologies right now.”
He’s surprised, then, when Erik turns a frankly disarming grin on him. “Naturally not. I saw your shot, you know. You almost missed your chance, but you rallied beautifully, and the rest you know. Learn faster.”
“Like I said, still in training.” Brandon safeties his pistol and puts it on the table. “Now him,” and he waves in Wesley’s direction, “you should really see him shoot.”
“Not now,” Wesley growls, and Brandon watches him stalk around Erik. “Bad case of adrenaline rush.”
“Understandable,” Erik says. “In my line of work one quickly figures out what to do in the moments after a kill.”
“Really,” Wesley says, and the slow spring-loaded way he says it makes Brandon snap to attention. He knows what’s coming next. “Like what?”
*
“Do I have your permission?” Erik asks.
Wesley smiles, sharp and sly like the nearly invisible edge of a well-balanced knife. “Do what you want.”
And, yes, it’s a good thing he’s leaning on the back of Brandon’s chair now because Erik sort of slides forward and moves up. Hands on Brandon’s knees, the two of them looking at each other - his strange Brandon, this familiar Erik - and then Brandon laughs, disbelief and amusement in his eyes as he glances quickly at Wesley and then falls forward into Erik. Hands reeling each other in. Erik’s tanned hands on Brandon’s black shirt. Brandon’s knees bracketing Erik tightly.
He could watch them do this all day, just kissing, Wesley thinks, and for all he thinks possessive thoughts toward Brandon it feels right to see him doing something like this because of reasons: the spark in his eyes, the sway in his movements, and suddenly Brandon is breaking away for the sole purpose of laughing.
Fuck, but he’s beautiful.
It takes just a quick push and Brandon’s out of his chair, is on his knees on the carpet and Erik is still kissing him, and now Wesley can actually see and feel his partner shaking and, yes, that’s all he really needed to know. He flattens himself against Brandon’s back, he can feel the excited breaths and the wild jackrabbiting beat of his heart, and Wesley meets Erik’s eyes over Brandon’s shoulders and it’s easy to come to an understanding. Something good, something real, no matter how fucking strange the circumstances might be.
*
Brandon almost falls over in shock when he recognizes the weight against his back and no that’s not fair but yes he wants it, he wants them both and it is nothing like the soulless encounters he’s had in the past. Erik burns brightly beneath his fingers - the ferocity is expected, but not the gentleness; and he could say the same for Wesley, who changed his life in a hot sweep of blue eyes.
He tears himself away from Erik long enough to look over his shoulder - and holy shit why does Wesley look so beautiful, so broken and needy? Brandon leans mindlessly into his touch, those rough fingers catching on his five o’-clock shadow and - what? - he’s being turned back towards Erik, and Wesley is murmuring, “Give him everything you’ve got and I’ll give you everything you want.”
He’s obeying even before he can nod, fingers already dipping into Erik’s waistband to pull up the back of his shirt. He’s not sure who moans when he makes contact, skin to skin, but the sound surrounds all three of them and those are definitely deadly smiles on the others’ faces. He can’t catch his breath. It’s like the newfound sensation of learning how to fire a gun, of throwing a punch.
Brandon blinks, and between one moment and the next he’s on his back on the floor, Wesley’s hands and mouth pinning him down, Erik touching him everywhere, and he thinks he might drown, and he cries out for them both. Hunger, lust, bliss.
*
Wesley motions to Brandon at some point and he gets a wicked smile in return; he watches avidly as Brandon flips Erik onto his back and pins him in place. Erik is all golden skin and scars, and right now he’s also nearly mindless with wanting, and it’s ridiculously easy to give him what he wants. He tastes like sun and sand and desert winds. The same build and the same lean strength, and Erik is nothing at all like Brandon - he fights Wesley as he finally bears down into him, fighting to get closer and closer still.
*
Wesley is as good as his word and Brandon would spare a moment to marvel at his iron control - but he’s well past coherent now and all he wants is Wesley, Wesley and Erik too, and he’s surrounded in them, he’s completely wound up in the two of them, and finally, he shatters beneath them, their names on his lips as he comes.
*
Three weeks later
He’s sifting the data for their next job - sources and types of ammunition, prevailing weather conditions, take a cab or steal one? - when Wesley bursts into half-outraged half-amused laughter; that alone would have caught his attention, but then Brandon catches sight of a familiar profile, and - well.
He’s still unhappy about being back in New York City - but maybe, just maybe, with Wesley and Erik backing him up, he can actually make it out in one piece this time.
Onward to All I need is a pair of wings
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 2010
fandoms: X-Men: First Class [movieverse], Shame, Wanted
pairings: Brandon Sullivan/Wesley Gibson/Erik Lehnsherr
rating: NC-17
notes: sexy-cracky crossover that got put together during a live-watch of Wanted together with madsmurf, with encouragement and cheerleading from yume-odori. Basically, modern AU, no mutant powers with the exception of Wesley Gibson, and what if Wesley and Brandon were an item, and they ran into a version of Erik while they're on a job?
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org.
“Teach me,” Brandon Sullivan says.
“I work alone,” Wesley Gibson says.
“Says who.”
Pause.
“If you don’t keep up with me, you’ll die.” Wesley ties his shoes on, sticks his H&K USP Compact back into his shoulder rig.
“Ask me if I really care.” Brandon looks up. “At least I’ll have had this - and you.”
That gets him a smirk. Wesley shakes his head, and crooks his fingers. “Fifteen minutes. Essentials only. Passport, IDs. I’ll supply the rest. One bag. Go.”
*
Brandon is an abnormally quick study.
The first thing Wesley does after putting him in the bath filled with hot water and the medicinal wax compound is look up this particular Sullivan family. What he sees there is...not good. Understatement of the year. No wonder Brandon feels the need to run all the time, no wonder he’s been slowly killing himself, silently going numb and insane. This is the sort of shit that is far beyond Wesley’s ken, and that’s saying a lot.
Wesley sometimes thinks it would be nice to feel afraid. Brandon is a disaster area in the making, a time bomb waiting to go off. Tell him to jump, he won’t even ask how high or how far - he’ll simply throw himself off the nearest edge. Easy as that. He really shouldn’t be hanging around with people as recklessly self-destructive - even he has some sense of clinging to life left. Brandon’s? Fucked off a long time ago. As dead and gone as the man he’d inadvertently left bleeding out in his wake.
But then, Wesley always has been the king of impulsive/idiot decisions. He’s going to have to see this one through.
And then there’s the sex, every deadly-delicious moment of it, every single time they do it: Brandon’s hands, his mouth, the things he knows. Eager to please in exactly the kind of way that Wesley craves, that makes it easy for Wesley to dominate him. He understands how Brandon came by all that knowledge and something in him growls in sheer bloody-minded possessiveness when he thinks, No one else. No sharing that. Mine now.
*
Brandon’s initiation, he learns after the first few times he’s laid out on his back, bleeding like a stuck pig, is nothing like Wesley’s. Sure, Wesley hits like a speeding train, and sure, Wesley knows way too much about how to kill a man with a knife, not to mention various and sundry other tools up to and including peanut butter and rats. What the actual fuck. But for the most part they stick with hand-to-hand combat, with guns.
Brandon remembers trying to tell people he’s not a fighting man. He gives up on that in the third sparring session, when he suddenly stops thinking and simply moves, counters half the blows being rained down on his head and then somehow manages to twist Wesley into some kind of chokehold. Pride-lust-accomplishment, that mocking smile like a goad and like a reward unto itself.
It pales in comparison, however, with the way Wesley touches him. After they’ve picked themselves up from the mats, after they’ve dealt with each other’s bruises - Brandon spends a dangerously long time hanging over the edge of release, imprisoned by the demands in those blue eyes, chained and held down by powerful hands. He begs for it, loud and shameless and needy, and every time he thinks he’ll fall Wesley yanks him back to reality, and laughs in his face.
When he finally comes, after Wesley leaves him completely strung out and mindless with desire, the release hits him exactly as Wesley would, and he spares a moment to be glad and thankful before he falls apart.
*
Seattle is rainy and damp and the fog hangs on their shoulders like grim death - but the job goes off without a hitch and Wesley runs all the way back to their hotel room, triumph like a touch-paper to his skin and senses, setting him alight. Twitching high of this success, of the idea of Brandon peering down his sniper rifle and crossing his shot with Wesley’s, pinpoint accuracy, and he’s already making plans when he shoves his keycard into the door and -
Someone else, Brandon’s in danger, and Wesley doesn’t think - he draws his handgun and puts the muzzle against skin and there’s a voice, urgent, whispering, “Don’t!”
Wesley blinks, and just barely manages to keep trigger discipline, and he looks, he really looks, he wills his heartbeat back down and it takes a while before his brain can catch up with him.
Because Brandon is in a chair, his own gun out, and pointed steadily at - at a man who looks almost exactly like him. Mirror image: the same bone structure, the same thin lips. The eyes are different, Brandon’s green to the stranger’s dark blue; as is the hair, Brandon’s auburn to the other’s brown.
Wesley looks from one man to another and snaps, “Explain,” to one or both of them.
“Erik Lehnsherr - Mossad,” Brandon’s doppelganger says. “We have been watching the man you killed for quite a long time now. He was suspected of money laundering - dealing in Nazi gold.”
Wesley snorts. “Nazis. Sure. He didn’t look a day over fifty.”
“We were trying to trace the trail back to his employers or his supporters until the two of you put bullets in his head,” the agent counters. “But clearly the matter is no longer any of our concern. It was kind of you to leave his associates to us; we shall continue our investigations from there.”
“None of which explains why you’re threatening my partner. Talk.”
*
Brandon smiles at Wesley, just the barest quirk of his lips, and it threatens to become more obvious when Wesley shrugs one shoulder and returns the smile. Partner is a good word. It means all kinds of good things.
He watches his double watch the silent exchange and - he knows the look in Erik’s eyes. He knows that particular tentative edge all too well. Interest, arousal, recklessness; it’s a look he’d seen in his own mirror, before this, before Wesley. Strange how it contorts this man’s features. Brandon knows, or at least he hopes, that he’s never looked as desolate as this - so much more alone than he used to be.
In the end, Erik sighs quietly and puts up his hands. “I don’t suppose I can apologize for the inconvenience and you’ll let me go.”
Like a magnet to the North Pole, Brandon’s eyes swing up to Wesley’s. “I’m really just the junior partner here, and I’m just guessing,” Brandon says, and watches as Wesley turns away and hides a grin. “But it’s more than just a matter of apologies right now.”
He’s surprised, then, when Erik turns a frankly disarming grin on him. “Naturally not. I saw your shot, you know. You almost missed your chance, but you rallied beautifully, and the rest you know. Learn faster.”
“Like I said, still in training.” Brandon safeties his pistol and puts it on the table. “Now him,” and he waves in Wesley’s direction, “you should really see him shoot.”
“Not now,” Wesley growls, and Brandon watches him stalk around Erik. “Bad case of adrenaline rush.”
“Understandable,” Erik says. “In my line of work one quickly figures out what to do in the moments after a kill.”
“Really,” Wesley says, and the slow spring-loaded way he says it makes Brandon snap to attention. He knows what’s coming next. “Like what?”
*
“Do I have your permission?” Erik asks.
Wesley smiles, sharp and sly like the nearly invisible edge of a well-balanced knife. “Do what you want.”
And, yes, it’s a good thing he’s leaning on the back of Brandon’s chair now because Erik sort of slides forward and moves up. Hands on Brandon’s knees, the two of them looking at each other - his strange Brandon, this familiar Erik - and then Brandon laughs, disbelief and amusement in his eyes as he glances quickly at Wesley and then falls forward into Erik. Hands reeling each other in. Erik’s tanned hands on Brandon’s black shirt. Brandon’s knees bracketing Erik tightly.
He could watch them do this all day, just kissing, Wesley thinks, and for all he thinks possessive thoughts toward Brandon it feels right to see him doing something like this because of reasons: the spark in his eyes, the sway in his movements, and suddenly Brandon is breaking away for the sole purpose of laughing.
Fuck, but he’s beautiful.
It takes just a quick push and Brandon’s out of his chair, is on his knees on the carpet and Erik is still kissing him, and now Wesley can actually see and feel his partner shaking and, yes, that’s all he really needed to know. He flattens himself against Brandon’s back, he can feel the excited breaths and the wild jackrabbiting beat of his heart, and Wesley meets Erik’s eyes over Brandon’s shoulders and it’s easy to come to an understanding. Something good, something real, no matter how fucking strange the circumstances might be.
*
Brandon almost falls over in shock when he recognizes the weight against his back and no that’s not fair but yes he wants it, he wants them both and it is nothing like the soulless encounters he’s had in the past. Erik burns brightly beneath his fingers - the ferocity is expected, but not the gentleness; and he could say the same for Wesley, who changed his life in a hot sweep of blue eyes.
He tears himself away from Erik long enough to look over his shoulder - and holy shit why does Wesley look so beautiful, so broken and needy? Brandon leans mindlessly into his touch, those rough fingers catching on his five o’-clock shadow and - what? - he’s being turned back towards Erik, and Wesley is murmuring, “Give him everything you’ve got and I’ll give you everything you want.”
He’s obeying even before he can nod, fingers already dipping into Erik’s waistband to pull up the back of his shirt. He’s not sure who moans when he makes contact, skin to skin, but the sound surrounds all three of them and those are definitely deadly smiles on the others’ faces. He can’t catch his breath. It’s like the newfound sensation of learning how to fire a gun, of throwing a punch.
Brandon blinks, and between one moment and the next he’s on his back on the floor, Wesley’s hands and mouth pinning him down, Erik touching him everywhere, and he thinks he might drown, and he cries out for them both. Hunger, lust, bliss.
*
Wesley motions to Brandon at some point and he gets a wicked smile in return; he watches avidly as Brandon flips Erik onto his back and pins him in place. Erik is all golden skin and scars, and right now he’s also nearly mindless with wanting, and it’s ridiculously easy to give him what he wants. He tastes like sun and sand and desert winds. The same build and the same lean strength, and Erik is nothing at all like Brandon - he fights Wesley as he finally bears down into him, fighting to get closer and closer still.
*
Wesley is as good as his word and Brandon would spare a moment to marvel at his iron control - but he’s well past coherent now and all he wants is Wesley, Wesley and Erik too, and he’s surrounded in them, he’s completely wound up in the two of them, and finally, he shatters beneath them, their names on his lips as he comes.
*
Three weeks later
He’s sifting the data for their next job - sources and types of ammunition, prevailing weather conditions, take a cab or steal one? - when Wesley bursts into half-outraged half-amused laughter; that alone would have caught his attention, but then Brandon catches sight of a familiar profile, and - well.
He’s still unhappy about being back in New York City - but maybe, just maybe, with Wesley and Erik backing him up, he can actually make it out in one piece this time.
Onward to All I need is a pair of wings