fic: but I would walk five hundred miles, and I would walk five hundred more (five:erik coming over)
And it's Monday! Here is the next chapter, in which Erik comes over, and we start earning that rating. Only cut for length; second part momentarily!
Title: But I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles, And I Would Walk Five Hundred More (Five: Erik, Coming Over) (1/2)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 8,126
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel, not me; only doing this for fun! title, opening, and closing lines from “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers
Summary/Notes: for a prompt on tumblr a while back that went like this: Charles goes to hire an escort himself from (who else?) Emma Frost’s service, sees a photo of artist!Erik and tries to book him, only to find Erik’s photo was misplaced and Erik is himself a client looking for an escort for a gallery opening… so Charles gets Emma to let him show up as Erik’s escort. Erik mistakes him for a rich donor and they spend the evening talking and probably bickering in a very UST way because Erik probably hates people like that. And Erik’s seething because he paid good money for his date and he never showed up. And later Charles follows Erik to his limo and quips, “oh, I think I’m supposed to be your date tonight?” with a cheeky little smile. Except my brain decided that there would be plot and secrets and Sebastian Shaw and Charles having an actual mission and Erik worrying and hurt/comfort and D/s themes and I don't even know.
TL;DR: In which Charles isn't really an escort, Erik thinks he only wants a one-night stand, everybody's got a past, and there's quite a lot of sex on the way to the happy ending.
Link to Chapter Four here, Three here, Two here, One here, Prologue here
It’s raining when he arrives at the specified address. The one Charles gave him, over the phone.
Driving up, he’d thought he must’ve made some mistake, scribbled the numbers down wrong. But he knows he hasn’t.
The houses get bigger and bigger and further and further apart, modern feudal mansions, each with their own sprawling demesne. They study his advance as if they’re preparing to pull out the flyswatter. Who is this person in jeans and a leather jacket-in his defense, both stylish, or so he’s been told-with a broken windshield wiper on his car?
They probably know he’s once been arrested, has had his years of shouting at equal rights rallies, his angry punk rebellion stage, his disgust for the parasites of society. He’s not that angry anymore-it’s been burned out of him, like cooling ashes, with time and the understanding that the side he’d thought he’d been on had changed around him, or maybe never been what he’d believed-but the evidence is still out there. And he’s not ashamed. He did believe it, once.
He wonders what Charles would think, would have thought, of him, then. And then he realizes that Charles, who had recognized him first at the exhibition, probably knows it all. Everything about him.
Or possibly not. Charles works for Emma Frost, in some strange untraditional fashion; Charles might only have seen his photo, enough to find him in a crowd.
Somehow Erik doesn’t think so, though. Even if that were the case, he can’t see Charles sitting tamely back and not looking up every scrap of information on his new client. His first client.
The houses aren’t even visible from the broadly curving road, at this point. How and why does Charles have a place out here? A gift? An inheritance? Why not sell it, instead of selling his body?
Too many questions. He wants to answer them all; doesn’t want to hear the answers, because that would mean admitting he cares what they are.
He steers the car down the indicated lane, and then the mansion looms up out of the thunderclouds and steals his breath away.
Might be the thunder. Or the lightning. Or the rows of windows, the swooping stone balconies that cry out for odd gargoyle faces, or the forbidding face of the expansive front steps, where the light, if there is one, appears to be out.
After a second he remembers to breathe, remembers that it’s just a house, that he’s being fucking melodramatic, that Charles is somewhere inside and more likely than not starting to wonder whether Erik’s in fact coming, because the rain’s slowed traffic to a crawl and getting out of the city’d been hell.
He’s not sure where to park, but there’s an incongruous secondhand compact car skewed off to one side, so he puts his own beside it, albeit more neatly. Charles’s possession? If it is, then their cars will be side by side in the storm; he chooses not to push the metaphor, and it’s certainly his imagination that his own car lets out what resembles a happy purr as he switches it off.
He grabs the box from the passenger seat, and sprints through the downpour.
Given the size of the place, he’s not surprised when Charles doesn’t instantly open the door at his knock, though something in his chest gives an unhappy small quiver, and then is silenced. It’s fine. He doesn’t care. He’s just here to fuck Charles again. And maybe play chess. And hold all the freckles while they sleep, because they could use the rest, because someone should, because he thinks that maybe Charles doesn’t sleep well, but did sleep, that day, in his arms.
“What the hell,” he says, to his chest and the bizarre warm feeling in it, while the rain splashes down; and of course this is the moment that Charles chooses to open the door.
“What?”
“What? Oh-sorry, I was…talking. To myself. Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry, I was upstairs, I was-I should’ve been waiting, I’m sorry, Erik.” Charles runs a hand through his hair. He looks different, indefinably. He’s wearing jeans that fit him in all the right places and a grandfatherly cardigan, far too old for him and slightly too large, and he’s slim and sturdy under all the fluff, and Erik wants to peel him out of those layers, slowly.
There’s a smudge of dust on his cheek, coating freckles. Something tired in his eyes.
“Here,” he says, in case it’ll make those endless oceans smile, and holds out his offering.
Charles tips his head to the side, taking it, tiredness shifting into entertained curiosity. “You didn’t have to bring anything. And come inside, please; it’s pouring out there. Cats and dogs. Big ones. Leopards and huskies.”
“Doberman pinschers,” Erik says, and follows him in, through the ornate entryway, past a number of silent sheet-draped echoing caves, to the one room that feels as if somebody might actually live there, namely the kitchen.
There’re take-out containers in the trash. Charles either can’t or doesn’t bother to cook, but at least he’s eating.
“You really didn’t have to,” Charles says, but his hands say other things: they’re opening the hasty wrapping job as he speaks. “You aren’t-oh, Erik.”
“You asked me if I had champagne, that first night.” It’s good champagne, too. “So we do.”
“I,” Charles declares, “am opening this,” and promptly hops up on one of the counters to retrieve two crystalline flutes. Erik openly stares, because Charles being too short for his own kitchen is unbearably adorable.
The cork comes out with a loud pop, and Charles pours, quick and refined, and hands him a glass. “We should make some sort of toast.”
“To…Friday afternoons?”
“To you, coming out here to see me.” That English-countryside voice is warm, despite the rain. Affectionate sunshine on the hedgerows. “To…us, maybe?”
“To us,” Erik agrees, and clinks his glass against Charles’s. “Can I ask you something?”
Charles hesitates, for a split second. “Of course.”
“Why do you have an English accent?”
Charles blinks, stares at him, and then starts laughing, so hard he nearly drops the champagne. Erik rescues it.
He likes hearing Charles laugh. It’s an astonished wondering sound, as if only occasionally used for genuine merriment, and it’s real.
“Oh, god,” Charles says, finally, leaning on the counter, reclaiming his drink. “No one ever asks. I suppose they all just don’t give a damn. I was born in England, in fact. Moved here when I was young; went back for Oxford, which I suppose knocked any lingering Americanisms out of me, except for the occasional craving for crunchy bacon and a tendency to drive on the wrong side of the road no matter which country I’m in. I have dual citizenship. Fair enough?”
“Crunchy bacon?”
Charles shrugs. “I like the texture.”
“Next time I’ll bring you breakfast.” He takes a drink; so does Charles, with raised eyebrows. “Aren’t you Jewish? I thought I’d heard that, somewhere.”
Somewhere, hmm? Charles, or more likely Emma Frost, must have interesting sources. That’s not widely advertised knowledge, not because he particularly cares about religion one way or the other, but because it’s his. Private. Something he’d shared with his mother, his father, not the world.
Charles is still looking at him. Managing to express curiosity, and concern, and compassion, all at once, with those eyes.
“My mother always liked to pretend I kept kosher,” he says. “We both knew I didn’t. She’d send me home with leftovers and tell me to come back when I ran out.” And then he finishes off the rest of his glass, because what the hell just happened? Why why why does Charles have magical truth-compelling eyes?
“You love her.” Charles finishes his own drink. Pours more for them both. “And she sounds…kind.”
“She was,” Erik says, briefly. “She’s dead. Cancer.” And drinks again.
Charles picks up the champagne, pours. “And you still love her.”
“I didn’t come here for a therapy session.”
“No.” Charles spins the bottle idly on the marble countertop. Watches it revolve. Erik can’t tell what he’s thinking. “You came here to fuck me. I’m sorry. I’m in a complicated mood. I’ll try to do better. Would you want to go upstairs, now? I know it’s not a terribly welcoming house, but I’ll do my best to be hospitable. Possibly with handcuffs; would you like to see what I look like with my hands behind my back?”
Erik, who’s just taken a sip of champagne, hoping to recover from the bizarre attack of personal oversharing, ends up trying to inhale bubbly alcohol, unsuccessfully.
“Oh, sorry!” Charles genuinely looks apologetic. “Towel?”
“Christ, Charles.”
“Sorry.”
“You…why are we here? This house.”
“It’s my house. More or less.” Charles polishes off his own champagne, studies Erik’s half-full treacherous glass, consumes that too. “At least for now. Bedroom?”
“Wait.” Erik puts a hand on his shoulder, stops him walking. “You…are you all right? You look…” He’s not sure how to phrase it. Withdrawn? Withdrawing? Distant? That’s not quite right, Charles is certainly here, but…
He wants that other laughing Charles, the one he’d caught a brief glimpse of, back again.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally, even though he’s not sure what he’s apologizing for.
Charles looks up at him incredulously. “What on earth for?”
“I…don’t know. Can I kiss you?”
“Oh, you want to get started here, we can do that-”
“Please.”
“Oh,” Charles says again, as Erik puts both hands on his shoulders, over the ludicrous fluffy cardigan. It’s soft under his fingers, as he reels Charles in.
They kiss softly, slowly, lazily; he learns the shape of Charles’s mouth, tasting him from the inside, champagne-sparkles and almond bitterness. Nibbles the aristocratic line of that throat, the soft vulnerable spot under his jawline, the delicious curl of an ear. Charles shivers when Erik’s teeth nip gently over the pulse-point in his neck, and tips his head back for easier access, practically melting into his arms.
“You like that?” He strokes a wayward loop of hair out of blue eyes. “Me marking you?” That will leave a mark, that one.
Charles sighs, “Yes,” and stretches up to kiss him on the lips, unreservedly hungry. Erik’s leaning back against the kitchen counter, which is digging into his hips; he’s got Charles between his legs, and when he shifts his weight, his arousal must be tangible, because he sees the smile before one freckled hand unbuckles his belt.
“I wanted to do this for you. I wanted to undress you, at the hotel…on my knees…I wanted to know how you would feel, inside me. How you’d taste. But also…”
“You want me to fuck you?” He’s unbuttoning the sweater, one fastening at a time. Anticipation. “Here? On your kitchen table?”
“Oh, fuck,” Charles says, “yes,” and their clothes disappear in a flurry of fabric, and Charles starts laughing when his shirt lands atop the refrigerator, and Erik tells him “I like hearing you laugh” because he does, and then picks him up and sets him down on the table, which thankfully is large and heavy and looks unlikely to be impressed by anything short of an apocalypse.
“Please,” Charles says, one hand already sliding between his own legs, lying there fingering himself open while Erik curses out loud and dives back for his pants and the condoms and lube in his pocket. “Please.”
Decadent, opulent, sinful: like a feast spread out, appropriately enough, for the consuming, Erik thinks, and promptly goes back to nibbling, dining on every inch of him, licking freckled thighs and the surprisingly sensitive spot at the crease of Charles’s hip, until Charles swears out loud and demands that he come up there “right bloody now!”
“Do you always get more British when you’re turned on-?”
“Will you stop talking and fuck me?”
“I can talk while I fuck you-” He rips open the foil packet with the hand that’s not teasing Charles’s cock, which is just irresistible, perfectly proportioned to fit his hand, curving and flushed and ready. “Do you want me to talk? To tell you how much I want you, the way I got myself off in the shower last week, thinking about your mouth? Because I did, Charles. I pictured you in there with me, at my feet, your mouth on my cock, and I came imagining you there-”
“Erik,” Charles gasps, lifting those legs, wrapping them around his waist, “yes-”
He thrusts. Hard. Charles goes absolutely silent, arching up against him; but those lips are parted in pleasure as well as shock, those eyes enormous and shining.
“Good?”
Charles moans, apparently out of words, and pulls him closer, and Erik’s happy to oblige, sliding out and slamming back into him, grabbing those long legs and pushing them up over his shoulders, and Charles gasps this time, eyes sliding shut. “Erik-”
“Yes?” Harder, this time; faster, too, speeding up, and Charles tenses and shudders under him, and whispers something, indistinct.
“Hmm?” He slows, for just a second. “Too hard?”
“No-” Charles blinks up at him, panting, hair stuck to his face. “So big, I said. You. You’re-oh god-” This last because Erik hadn’t been able to help the movement, pushing into him even deeper, at those words, that pronouncement. “Too good-”
“Like this?” He shoves those legs up higher; Charles doesn’t argue, even though he’s practically being folded in half. Opened up and offered, for Erik to take. “You want me to come like this? Fucking you as hard as I can, on your kitchen table? Or-can you come like this, just from my cock inside you? So big, you said…will you come from that? On my cock?”
“Oh god,” Charles says again, a tiny silvery gasp, and then he is, wet heat spilling out between them, shaking everywhere, body clamping down around Erik’s cock; and Erik plunges into him once more, twice, and groans his name and follows, ecstasy blurring his vision into white.
When he starts to move, after some unknowable peaceful time, Charles lets out a small cry and clings to him, face buried in his neck. “Erik…”
“Shh. It’s all right, I’m coming back, I just have to…” He rolls off the table, and off of Charles, with reluctance; looks around for condom-disposal options, settles for tossing it into a paper towel in the trash. His legs feel wobbly.
When he turns back around, Charles is sitting up, blinking, running a hand through thoroughly disheveled hair. “I…Erik.”
“Yes?”
“We…my god, we just…” Charles looks down at the expanse of wood beneath him. Pats it, a little gingerly. “We’ve just had sex on my mother’s imported Balinese teak dining table.”
“Does it mind?”
“No…” He slides off the end and onto his feet. His legs wobble too. Erik, without thinking, catches him. “Thank you.”
“For what,” Erik says, echoing Charles’s words from earlier; sees the smile when their eyes meet. “Upstairs? Ah…shower?”
“Shower,” Charles agrees, and accepts the support without argument, while steering them there.
The shower is sumptuous. Extravagant. As steeped in old wealth as the rest of the house. But here Erik finds he minds it less, certainly once Charles glances sideways at him, pure pint-sized mischief, and starts playing with myriad settings.
“Massage? Rainshower? Deluge?”
Erik splutters. “Not deluge. What’s this one? Pulse?”
“Oh, I like that one.”
“Do you…” Ah. Yes, he can see why. He aims it at Charles for a while, finding certain interesting places, while Charles yelps and squirms and doesn’t move away. “Not there, that’s kind of tender…”
“Oh. Did I…”
“No, you didn’t. I’m fine. And very clean, now.”
“But I like you dirty,” Erik says, and Charles flings water at him, and so he resolves to make every terrible pun he can, in the future, at every opportunity.
They wander out of the fabulous shower, first flush of need and desire and passion sated for now but lingering like sparks beneath skin; Charles maneuvers them through a connecting door and into a bedroom. “Home.”
The room continues the general impression of neglected luxury, but here at least someone’s been fighting back against the entropy. There’s a tattered T.H. White paperback next to the bed. A lopsided tower of Heinlein novels. Clothing peeks coyly through a half-open closet door.
Charles waves at the bed. “Let me introduce you. Erik, meet my bed.”
Charles surely doesn’t actually expect him to say hello. He regards the exaggerated pile of pillows and fluff and blue satin and ornate bedposts with some reservation; it studies him right back, sizing up this person its owner’s brought home.
Charles chooses to ignore this byplay, instead flopping down naked onto the pillows in a manner that shouldn’t be graceful or seductive but achieves both. “I do like my bed. Possibly the one piece worth salvaging. Well, this and the alcohol selection. What do you think?”
“I…think I’ve left my clothing downstairs.”
“Oh-”
“Condoms, Charles.”
“Oh. Ah…” Charles nibbles on his lower lip, for a second. “I have some, actually, but…you could…we could…we don’t have to.”
“That…sounds like…a not good idea.” In fact, it sounds like a brilliant idea, and all the atoms of his body are shouting at him very loudly to shut up and say yes, but.
He looks at Charles again. Charles, who works as an escort. Who very obviously hadn’t been a virgin when they’d met.
He’s not sure how to frame that question without some sort of horrible insult; Charles is already blushing, pink everywhere, not looking at him.
He knows he’s clean. He’s been careful, and he’s been tested, and it’s been months since he’s slept with anyone anyway, certainly since before his last doctor’s visit. And he doesn’t really think that Charles wouldn’t be careful also, but…
“I…” Charles is still scarlet, over all the freckles. “You can check. I made an appointment, when I knew you’d be coming…oh, god, terrible word choice, I’m so sorry…that paper, though, on the desk, to your right…”
He glances over, but doesn’t bother picking it up. Charles could just as easily not have said anything; it’s no doubt real.
He walks over, instead, and sits down on the improbable bed. It’s unfairly comfortable. “You did that for us?”
“Um. Yes?”
“But you don’t know about me. You don’t know…” He fits a hand around the closest part of Charles, which happens to be an ankle. Fine-boned and flexible, it doesn’t resist his grip. “You would trust me?”
“I know it’s stupid,” Charles says. “Believe me, I know. But you…” Another of those expressive lip-licks, from the depths of the bed. “You cared about me. That first night. Whether I was-was safe. So, yes, if you tell me we’re good, I’ll trust you.”
Erik takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “We’re good.”
And those sea-jewel eyes sparkle. “Good.”
“So…” He taps fingers over that ankle, thin skin, complicated joint of bone and tendon. Charles lifts those very vocal eyebrows at him, but doesn’t say anything, only watching. “You want me here. In your bed.”
“Very much yes.” Up on both elbows. Head tipped to the side, considering. “You can go open those drawers. Left side; pick one.”
This time Erik raises the eyebrows. “Orders, Charles?”
“No.” Charles gazes at him. “Options. I did tell you I had certain items. Feel free.”
Given this invitation, he gets up. Finds the drawers, opens, stares.
Charles has…many items, yes. Handcuffs. Vibrators in various shapes and sizes. Other, even less mainstream, options. Whips. Clamps. Cock rings. Paddles. A riding crop. He turns around to look at the bed; Charles looks back at him, but doesn’t offer any commentary, so he goes back to investigating.
Leather. Two canes, in different wood. Ropes, both silk and rough. He pictures Charles tied down across that bed, elegant limbs fastened to all those spiraling bedposts by blue cord. Remembers to inhale.
There’re some things he doesn’t recognize, which, fair enough, he’s not an expert in that particular scene. But some of them look…cruel.
He picks up the riding crop, experimentally. Swishes it through the air. “You…use these?”
“I prefer them used on me, but yes, I can. If you want.”
“You…I thought you said you’d never been an escort before.”
“I haven’t, no.” Charles looks as if he’s waiting for a follow-up question, but Erik can’t think of what that might be, so lets it go.
“So these are for fun.”
“I…Emma’s clients…” Charles pauses, bites his bottom lip, hard enough to leave darker lines in pink skin. “They sometimes want…services…that her regular staff can’t…I can. But I prefer using my own, ah, equipment, if the client doesn’t mind. I’m sure you can guess why.”
He sets the crop down. Very precisely. Back where he’d found it. There’s a whole confession in those few sentences, and if he pays attention to the neatness of the drawer, he won’t have to think about Charles providing services for Frost’s clients, for the clients who want more, beyond what they’d normally get from a night of pleasure from a hired sex worker. Won’t have to picture Charles bruised or gagged or worse, bleeding, from whips or from knifeplay or from, god, being held down and-
“Erik,” Charles says, voice a little urgent. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I don’t say yes to anything I’m not comfortable with. Or-I would say something, if I weren’t. I bought these. I-”
“What if you couldn’t? Say no.” He turns around. “You-have you ever? Stopped anything?”
Charles’s eyes flick away, all hidden sapphire dismay; that’s the answer. It’s not the one he wants.
“Charles-” What can he say? This isn’t right, it’s not fair, it’s not fair to you? You can say no?
But Charles knows that. He’s not stupid. He’s chosen this option, for whatever reason. He works for Emma Frost and lets himself be whipped and fucked and beaten with those canes and abused, for money, because he thinks it’s worth it, somehow, someway.
He can’t need the money that badly. He lives in this mansion. He’s bought these items. But maybe there are things Erik doesn’t know. Maybe Charles is sick, or dying, paying off hospital bills, something slow and lingering and devastating, the way Erik’s mother’d-
“Erik-” Charles flows off the bed, one sinuous motion, and crosses the room in a lovely rush of freckles. “What’s wrong?”
“I-” He fights for balance. Equilibrium. “Charles, you-you’re all right, are you? I mean-this isn’t-you’re not-”
“What, secretly deathly ill and enjoying my final months of debauchery?” That accent sounds entertained by the concept, but the blue eyes soften with concern when they look up at Erik’s face, when Charles reaches for Erik’s hand, lifts it to his neck. “No. Nothing like that. Can you feel this? My pulse? That’s my heartbeat. Completely fine.”
“You might-”
“Erik. I’m fine.”
They stand there for a while, unmoving, in Charles’s bedroom with the drawers full of leather and sin and the well-worn optimism of the science-fiction paperbacks beside the bed. With Erik’s hand, under Charles’s hand, resting over a pulse-beat, a steady drum-sound of life. Those ocean-glass eyes catch his own, and hold him, not letting go.
“I’ve never brought anyone else back here,” Charles tells him, softly. “Always hotels; no one else but you. My bed, and my kitchen table, and you.”
“All your surfaces,” Erik says, a little hoarsely. “Every last one.”
“Really?” Wry, affectionate, smiling, fingers curling their way around his. “That might take a while. And I did mean it about introducing you to my pillows.”
Erik turns his head. Says, “Hello,” to the pillows. He’s going to fuck Charles on them.
And Charles laughs again. And Erik wants to taste that sound, every last glorious rippling note; wants to put him on his back on that feathery mattress and watch those extraordinary eyes go wide with bliss as Erik’s cock pushes inside him.
“So,” he says. “Your bed.”
The rain chooses this moment to splash dramatically against the windowpane.
Charles, looking like the embodiment of decadence, hair drying into post-shower impossibilities, freckles glinting in the storm-light, grins: what’re we waiting for?
“Did you…want me to pick things?” He glances back at the drawers. “Or-do you have favorites?”
“Me?” A blink, a head-tip, considering.
“Be honest.” Just in case.
“Scarves,” Charles says, promptly. “Or the softer ropes. Luxurious. If you’re going to let me indulge myself.”
“Hedonist. What else?”
“Guilty. Cock rings. Or…anything along those lines, really…the denial…”
“You want me to make you wait?” He slides a hand down to one graceful wrist. Squeezes. “You want me to make you beg for it?”
“Yes. Is that…”
“Oh,” Erik says, “I think I can manage that,” and steps a little closer to him, invading his space; hears the gasp.
Title: But I Would Walk Five Hundred Miles, And I Would Walk Five Hundred More (Five: Erik, Coming Over) (1/2)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 8,126
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel, not me; only doing this for fun! title, opening, and closing lines from “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers
Summary/Notes: for a prompt on tumblr a while back that went like this: Charles goes to hire an escort himself from (who else?) Emma Frost’s service, sees a photo of artist!Erik and tries to book him, only to find Erik’s photo was misplaced and Erik is himself a client looking for an escort for a gallery opening… so Charles gets Emma to let him show up as Erik’s escort. Erik mistakes him for a rich donor and they spend the evening talking and probably bickering in a very UST way because Erik probably hates people like that. And Erik’s seething because he paid good money for his date and he never showed up. And later Charles follows Erik to his limo and quips, “oh, I think I’m supposed to be your date tonight?” with a cheeky little smile. Except my brain decided that there would be plot and secrets and Sebastian Shaw and Charles having an actual mission and Erik worrying and hurt/comfort and D/s themes and I don't even know.
TL;DR: In which Charles isn't really an escort, Erik thinks he only wants a one-night stand, everybody's got a past, and there's quite a lot of sex on the way to the happy ending.
Link to Chapter Four here, Three here, Two here, One here, Prologue here
It’s raining when he arrives at the specified address. The one Charles gave him, over the phone.
Driving up, he’d thought he must’ve made some mistake, scribbled the numbers down wrong. But he knows he hasn’t.
The houses get bigger and bigger and further and further apart, modern feudal mansions, each with their own sprawling demesne. They study his advance as if they’re preparing to pull out the flyswatter. Who is this person in jeans and a leather jacket-in his defense, both stylish, or so he’s been told-with a broken windshield wiper on his car?
They probably know he’s once been arrested, has had his years of shouting at equal rights rallies, his angry punk rebellion stage, his disgust for the parasites of society. He’s not that angry anymore-it’s been burned out of him, like cooling ashes, with time and the understanding that the side he’d thought he’d been on had changed around him, or maybe never been what he’d believed-but the evidence is still out there. And he’s not ashamed. He did believe it, once.
He wonders what Charles would think, would have thought, of him, then. And then he realizes that Charles, who had recognized him first at the exhibition, probably knows it all. Everything about him.
Or possibly not. Charles works for Emma Frost, in some strange untraditional fashion; Charles might only have seen his photo, enough to find him in a crowd.
Somehow Erik doesn’t think so, though. Even if that were the case, he can’t see Charles sitting tamely back and not looking up every scrap of information on his new client. His first client.
The houses aren’t even visible from the broadly curving road, at this point. How and why does Charles have a place out here? A gift? An inheritance? Why not sell it, instead of selling his body?
Too many questions. He wants to answer them all; doesn’t want to hear the answers, because that would mean admitting he cares what they are.
He steers the car down the indicated lane, and then the mansion looms up out of the thunderclouds and steals his breath away.
Might be the thunder. Or the lightning. Or the rows of windows, the swooping stone balconies that cry out for odd gargoyle faces, or the forbidding face of the expansive front steps, where the light, if there is one, appears to be out.
After a second he remembers to breathe, remembers that it’s just a house, that he’s being fucking melodramatic, that Charles is somewhere inside and more likely than not starting to wonder whether Erik’s in fact coming, because the rain’s slowed traffic to a crawl and getting out of the city’d been hell.
He’s not sure where to park, but there’s an incongruous secondhand compact car skewed off to one side, so he puts his own beside it, albeit more neatly. Charles’s possession? If it is, then their cars will be side by side in the storm; he chooses not to push the metaphor, and it’s certainly his imagination that his own car lets out what resembles a happy purr as he switches it off.
He grabs the box from the passenger seat, and sprints through the downpour.
Given the size of the place, he’s not surprised when Charles doesn’t instantly open the door at his knock, though something in his chest gives an unhappy small quiver, and then is silenced. It’s fine. He doesn’t care. He’s just here to fuck Charles again. And maybe play chess. And hold all the freckles while they sleep, because they could use the rest, because someone should, because he thinks that maybe Charles doesn’t sleep well, but did sleep, that day, in his arms.
“What the hell,” he says, to his chest and the bizarre warm feeling in it, while the rain splashes down; and of course this is the moment that Charles chooses to open the door.
“What?”
“What? Oh-sorry, I was…talking. To myself. Sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry, I was upstairs, I was-I should’ve been waiting, I’m sorry, Erik.” Charles runs a hand through his hair. He looks different, indefinably. He’s wearing jeans that fit him in all the right places and a grandfatherly cardigan, far too old for him and slightly too large, and he’s slim and sturdy under all the fluff, and Erik wants to peel him out of those layers, slowly.
There’s a smudge of dust on his cheek, coating freckles. Something tired in his eyes.
“Here,” he says, in case it’ll make those endless oceans smile, and holds out his offering.
Charles tips his head to the side, taking it, tiredness shifting into entertained curiosity. “You didn’t have to bring anything. And come inside, please; it’s pouring out there. Cats and dogs. Big ones. Leopards and huskies.”
“Doberman pinschers,” Erik says, and follows him in, through the ornate entryway, past a number of silent sheet-draped echoing caves, to the one room that feels as if somebody might actually live there, namely the kitchen.
There’re take-out containers in the trash. Charles either can’t or doesn’t bother to cook, but at least he’s eating.
“You really didn’t have to,” Charles says, but his hands say other things: they’re opening the hasty wrapping job as he speaks. “You aren’t-oh, Erik.”
“You asked me if I had champagne, that first night.” It’s good champagne, too. “So we do.”
“I,” Charles declares, “am opening this,” and promptly hops up on one of the counters to retrieve two crystalline flutes. Erik openly stares, because Charles being too short for his own kitchen is unbearably adorable.
The cork comes out with a loud pop, and Charles pours, quick and refined, and hands him a glass. “We should make some sort of toast.”
“To…Friday afternoons?”
“To you, coming out here to see me.” That English-countryside voice is warm, despite the rain. Affectionate sunshine on the hedgerows. “To…us, maybe?”
“To us,” Erik agrees, and clinks his glass against Charles’s. “Can I ask you something?”
Charles hesitates, for a split second. “Of course.”
“Why do you have an English accent?”
Charles blinks, stares at him, and then starts laughing, so hard he nearly drops the champagne. Erik rescues it.
He likes hearing Charles laugh. It’s an astonished wondering sound, as if only occasionally used for genuine merriment, and it’s real.
“Oh, god,” Charles says, finally, leaning on the counter, reclaiming his drink. “No one ever asks. I suppose they all just don’t give a damn. I was born in England, in fact. Moved here when I was young; went back for Oxford, which I suppose knocked any lingering Americanisms out of me, except for the occasional craving for crunchy bacon and a tendency to drive on the wrong side of the road no matter which country I’m in. I have dual citizenship. Fair enough?”
“Crunchy bacon?”
Charles shrugs. “I like the texture.”
“Next time I’ll bring you breakfast.” He takes a drink; so does Charles, with raised eyebrows. “Aren’t you Jewish? I thought I’d heard that, somewhere.”
Somewhere, hmm? Charles, or more likely Emma Frost, must have interesting sources. That’s not widely advertised knowledge, not because he particularly cares about religion one way or the other, but because it’s his. Private. Something he’d shared with his mother, his father, not the world.
Charles is still looking at him. Managing to express curiosity, and concern, and compassion, all at once, with those eyes.
“My mother always liked to pretend I kept kosher,” he says. “We both knew I didn’t. She’d send me home with leftovers and tell me to come back when I ran out.” And then he finishes off the rest of his glass, because what the hell just happened? Why why why does Charles have magical truth-compelling eyes?
“You love her.” Charles finishes his own drink. Pours more for them both. “And she sounds…kind.”
“She was,” Erik says, briefly. “She’s dead. Cancer.” And drinks again.
Charles picks up the champagne, pours. “And you still love her.”
“I didn’t come here for a therapy session.”
“No.” Charles spins the bottle idly on the marble countertop. Watches it revolve. Erik can’t tell what he’s thinking. “You came here to fuck me. I’m sorry. I’m in a complicated mood. I’ll try to do better. Would you want to go upstairs, now? I know it’s not a terribly welcoming house, but I’ll do my best to be hospitable. Possibly with handcuffs; would you like to see what I look like with my hands behind my back?”
Erik, who’s just taken a sip of champagne, hoping to recover from the bizarre attack of personal oversharing, ends up trying to inhale bubbly alcohol, unsuccessfully.
“Oh, sorry!” Charles genuinely looks apologetic. “Towel?”
“Christ, Charles.”
“Sorry.”
“You…why are we here? This house.”
“It’s my house. More or less.” Charles polishes off his own champagne, studies Erik’s half-full treacherous glass, consumes that too. “At least for now. Bedroom?”
“Wait.” Erik puts a hand on his shoulder, stops him walking. “You…are you all right? You look…” He’s not sure how to phrase it. Withdrawn? Withdrawing? Distant? That’s not quite right, Charles is certainly here, but…
He wants that other laughing Charles, the one he’d caught a brief glimpse of, back again.
“I’m sorry,” he says finally, even though he’s not sure what he’s apologizing for.
Charles looks up at him incredulously. “What on earth for?”
“I…don’t know. Can I kiss you?”
“Oh, you want to get started here, we can do that-”
“Please.”
“Oh,” Charles says again, as Erik puts both hands on his shoulders, over the ludicrous fluffy cardigan. It’s soft under his fingers, as he reels Charles in.
They kiss softly, slowly, lazily; he learns the shape of Charles’s mouth, tasting him from the inside, champagne-sparkles and almond bitterness. Nibbles the aristocratic line of that throat, the soft vulnerable spot under his jawline, the delicious curl of an ear. Charles shivers when Erik’s teeth nip gently over the pulse-point in his neck, and tips his head back for easier access, practically melting into his arms.
“You like that?” He strokes a wayward loop of hair out of blue eyes. “Me marking you?” That will leave a mark, that one.
Charles sighs, “Yes,” and stretches up to kiss him on the lips, unreservedly hungry. Erik’s leaning back against the kitchen counter, which is digging into his hips; he’s got Charles between his legs, and when he shifts his weight, his arousal must be tangible, because he sees the smile before one freckled hand unbuckles his belt.
“I wanted to do this for you. I wanted to undress you, at the hotel…on my knees…I wanted to know how you would feel, inside me. How you’d taste. But also…”
“You want me to fuck you?” He’s unbuttoning the sweater, one fastening at a time. Anticipation. “Here? On your kitchen table?”
“Oh, fuck,” Charles says, “yes,” and their clothes disappear in a flurry of fabric, and Charles starts laughing when his shirt lands atop the refrigerator, and Erik tells him “I like hearing you laugh” because he does, and then picks him up and sets him down on the table, which thankfully is large and heavy and looks unlikely to be impressed by anything short of an apocalypse.
“Please,” Charles says, one hand already sliding between his own legs, lying there fingering himself open while Erik curses out loud and dives back for his pants and the condoms and lube in his pocket. “Please.”
Decadent, opulent, sinful: like a feast spread out, appropriately enough, for the consuming, Erik thinks, and promptly goes back to nibbling, dining on every inch of him, licking freckled thighs and the surprisingly sensitive spot at the crease of Charles’s hip, until Charles swears out loud and demands that he come up there “right bloody now!”
“Do you always get more British when you’re turned on-?”
“Will you stop talking and fuck me?”
“I can talk while I fuck you-” He rips open the foil packet with the hand that’s not teasing Charles’s cock, which is just irresistible, perfectly proportioned to fit his hand, curving and flushed and ready. “Do you want me to talk? To tell you how much I want you, the way I got myself off in the shower last week, thinking about your mouth? Because I did, Charles. I pictured you in there with me, at my feet, your mouth on my cock, and I came imagining you there-”
“Erik,” Charles gasps, lifting those legs, wrapping them around his waist, “yes-”
He thrusts. Hard. Charles goes absolutely silent, arching up against him; but those lips are parted in pleasure as well as shock, those eyes enormous and shining.
“Good?”
Charles moans, apparently out of words, and pulls him closer, and Erik’s happy to oblige, sliding out and slamming back into him, grabbing those long legs and pushing them up over his shoulders, and Charles gasps this time, eyes sliding shut. “Erik-”
“Yes?” Harder, this time; faster, too, speeding up, and Charles tenses and shudders under him, and whispers something, indistinct.
“Hmm?” He slows, for just a second. “Too hard?”
“No-” Charles blinks up at him, panting, hair stuck to his face. “So big, I said. You. You’re-oh god-” This last because Erik hadn’t been able to help the movement, pushing into him even deeper, at those words, that pronouncement. “Too good-”
“Like this?” He shoves those legs up higher; Charles doesn’t argue, even though he’s practically being folded in half. Opened up and offered, for Erik to take. “You want me to come like this? Fucking you as hard as I can, on your kitchen table? Or-can you come like this, just from my cock inside you? So big, you said…will you come from that? On my cock?”
“Oh god,” Charles says again, a tiny silvery gasp, and then he is, wet heat spilling out between them, shaking everywhere, body clamping down around Erik’s cock; and Erik plunges into him once more, twice, and groans his name and follows, ecstasy blurring his vision into white.
When he starts to move, after some unknowable peaceful time, Charles lets out a small cry and clings to him, face buried in his neck. “Erik…”
“Shh. It’s all right, I’m coming back, I just have to…” He rolls off the table, and off of Charles, with reluctance; looks around for condom-disposal options, settles for tossing it into a paper towel in the trash. His legs feel wobbly.
When he turns back around, Charles is sitting up, blinking, running a hand through thoroughly disheveled hair. “I…Erik.”
“Yes?”
“We…my god, we just…” Charles looks down at the expanse of wood beneath him. Pats it, a little gingerly. “We’ve just had sex on my mother’s imported Balinese teak dining table.”
“Does it mind?”
“No…” He slides off the end and onto his feet. His legs wobble too. Erik, without thinking, catches him. “Thank you.”
“For what,” Erik says, echoing Charles’s words from earlier; sees the smile when their eyes meet. “Upstairs? Ah…shower?”
“Shower,” Charles agrees, and accepts the support without argument, while steering them there.
The shower is sumptuous. Extravagant. As steeped in old wealth as the rest of the house. But here Erik finds he minds it less, certainly once Charles glances sideways at him, pure pint-sized mischief, and starts playing with myriad settings.
“Massage? Rainshower? Deluge?”
Erik splutters. “Not deluge. What’s this one? Pulse?”
“Oh, I like that one.”
“Do you…” Ah. Yes, he can see why. He aims it at Charles for a while, finding certain interesting places, while Charles yelps and squirms and doesn’t move away. “Not there, that’s kind of tender…”
“Oh. Did I…”
“No, you didn’t. I’m fine. And very clean, now.”
“But I like you dirty,” Erik says, and Charles flings water at him, and so he resolves to make every terrible pun he can, in the future, at every opportunity.
They wander out of the fabulous shower, first flush of need and desire and passion sated for now but lingering like sparks beneath skin; Charles maneuvers them through a connecting door and into a bedroom. “Home.”
The room continues the general impression of neglected luxury, but here at least someone’s been fighting back against the entropy. There’s a tattered T.H. White paperback next to the bed. A lopsided tower of Heinlein novels. Clothing peeks coyly through a half-open closet door.
Charles waves at the bed. “Let me introduce you. Erik, meet my bed.”
Charles surely doesn’t actually expect him to say hello. He regards the exaggerated pile of pillows and fluff and blue satin and ornate bedposts with some reservation; it studies him right back, sizing up this person its owner’s brought home.
Charles chooses to ignore this byplay, instead flopping down naked onto the pillows in a manner that shouldn’t be graceful or seductive but achieves both. “I do like my bed. Possibly the one piece worth salvaging. Well, this and the alcohol selection. What do you think?”
“I…think I’ve left my clothing downstairs.”
“Oh-”
“Condoms, Charles.”
“Oh. Ah…” Charles nibbles on his lower lip, for a second. “I have some, actually, but…you could…we could…we don’t have to.”
“That…sounds like…a not good idea.” In fact, it sounds like a brilliant idea, and all the atoms of his body are shouting at him very loudly to shut up and say yes, but.
He looks at Charles again. Charles, who works as an escort. Who very obviously hadn’t been a virgin when they’d met.
He’s not sure how to frame that question without some sort of horrible insult; Charles is already blushing, pink everywhere, not looking at him.
He knows he’s clean. He’s been careful, and he’s been tested, and it’s been months since he’s slept with anyone anyway, certainly since before his last doctor’s visit. And he doesn’t really think that Charles wouldn’t be careful also, but…
“I…” Charles is still scarlet, over all the freckles. “You can check. I made an appointment, when I knew you’d be coming…oh, god, terrible word choice, I’m so sorry…that paper, though, on the desk, to your right…”
He glances over, but doesn’t bother picking it up. Charles could just as easily not have said anything; it’s no doubt real.
He walks over, instead, and sits down on the improbable bed. It’s unfairly comfortable. “You did that for us?”
“Um. Yes?”
“But you don’t know about me. You don’t know…” He fits a hand around the closest part of Charles, which happens to be an ankle. Fine-boned and flexible, it doesn’t resist his grip. “You would trust me?”
“I know it’s stupid,” Charles says. “Believe me, I know. But you…” Another of those expressive lip-licks, from the depths of the bed. “You cared about me. That first night. Whether I was-was safe. So, yes, if you tell me we’re good, I’ll trust you.”
Erik takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “We’re good.”
And those sea-jewel eyes sparkle. “Good.”
“So…” He taps fingers over that ankle, thin skin, complicated joint of bone and tendon. Charles lifts those very vocal eyebrows at him, but doesn’t say anything, only watching. “You want me here. In your bed.”
“Very much yes.” Up on both elbows. Head tipped to the side, considering. “You can go open those drawers. Left side; pick one.”
This time Erik raises the eyebrows. “Orders, Charles?”
“No.” Charles gazes at him. “Options. I did tell you I had certain items. Feel free.”
Given this invitation, he gets up. Finds the drawers, opens, stares.
Charles has…many items, yes. Handcuffs. Vibrators in various shapes and sizes. Other, even less mainstream, options. Whips. Clamps. Cock rings. Paddles. A riding crop. He turns around to look at the bed; Charles looks back at him, but doesn’t offer any commentary, so he goes back to investigating.
Leather. Two canes, in different wood. Ropes, both silk and rough. He pictures Charles tied down across that bed, elegant limbs fastened to all those spiraling bedposts by blue cord. Remembers to inhale.
There’re some things he doesn’t recognize, which, fair enough, he’s not an expert in that particular scene. But some of them look…cruel.
He picks up the riding crop, experimentally. Swishes it through the air. “You…use these?”
“I prefer them used on me, but yes, I can. If you want.”
“You…I thought you said you’d never been an escort before.”
“I haven’t, no.” Charles looks as if he’s waiting for a follow-up question, but Erik can’t think of what that might be, so lets it go.
“So these are for fun.”
“I…Emma’s clients…” Charles pauses, bites his bottom lip, hard enough to leave darker lines in pink skin. “They sometimes want…services…that her regular staff can’t…I can. But I prefer using my own, ah, equipment, if the client doesn’t mind. I’m sure you can guess why.”
He sets the crop down. Very precisely. Back where he’d found it. There’s a whole confession in those few sentences, and if he pays attention to the neatness of the drawer, he won’t have to think about Charles providing services for Frost’s clients, for the clients who want more, beyond what they’d normally get from a night of pleasure from a hired sex worker. Won’t have to picture Charles bruised or gagged or worse, bleeding, from whips or from knifeplay or from, god, being held down and-
“Erik,” Charles says, voice a little urgent. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I don’t say yes to anything I’m not comfortable with. Or-I would say something, if I weren’t. I bought these. I-”
“What if you couldn’t? Say no.” He turns around. “You-have you ever? Stopped anything?”
Charles’s eyes flick away, all hidden sapphire dismay; that’s the answer. It’s not the one he wants.
“Charles-” What can he say? This isn’t right, it’s not fair, it’s not fair to you? You can say no?
But Charles knows that. He’s not stupid. He’s chosen this option, for whatever reason. He works for Emma Frost and lets himself be whipped and fucked and beaten with those canes and abused, for money, because he thinks it’s worth it, somehow, someway.
He can’t need the money that badly. He lives in this mansion. He’s bought these items. But maybe there are things Erik doesn’t know. Maybe Charles is sick, or dying, paying off hospital bills, something slow and lingering and devastating, the way Erik’s mother’d-
“Erik-” Charles flows off the bed, one sinuous motion, and crosses the room in a lovely rush of freckles. “What’s wrong?”
“I-” He fights for balance. Equilibrium. “Charles, you-you’re all right, are you? I mean-this isn’t-you’re not-”
“What, secretly deathly ill and enjoying my final months of debauchery?” That accent sounds entertained by the concept, but the blue eyes soften with concern when they look up at Erik’s face, when Charles reaches for Erik’s hand, lifts it to his neck. “No. Nothing like that. Can you feel this? My pulse? That’s my heartbeat. Completely fine.”
“You might-”
“Erik. I’m fine.”
They stand there for a while, unmoving, in Charles’s bedroom with the drawers full of leather and sin and the well-worn optimism of the science-fiction paperbacks beside the bed. With Erik’s hand, under Charles’s hand, resting over a pulse-beat, a steady drum-sound of life. Those ocean-glass eyes catch his own, and hold him, not letting go.
“I’ve never brought anyone else back here,” Charles tells him, softly. “Always hotels; no one else but you. My bed, and my kitchen table, and you.”
“All your surfaces,” Erik says, a little hoarsely. “Every last one.”
“Really?” Wry, affectionate, smiling, fingers curling their way around his. “That might take a while. And I did mean it about introducing you to my pillows.”
Erik turns his head. Says, “Hello,” to the pillows. He’s going to fuck Charles on them.
And Charles laughs again. And Erik wants to taste that sound, every last glorious rippling note; wants to put him on his back on that feathery mattress and watch those extraordinary eyes go wide with bliss as Erik’s cock pushes inside him.
“So,” he says. “Your bed.”
The rain chooses this moment to splash dramatically against the windowpane.
Charles, looking like the embodiment of decadence, hair drying into post-shower impossibilities, freckles glinting in the storm-light, grins: what’re we waiting for?
“Did you…want me to pick things?” He glances back at the drawers. “Or-do you have favorites?”
“Me?” A blink, a head-tip, considering.
“Be honest.” Just in case.
“Scarves,” Charles says, promptly. “Or the softer ropes. Luxurious. If you’re going to let me indulge myself.”
“Hedonist. What else?”
“Guilty. Cock rings. Or…anything along those lines, really…the denial…”
“You want me to make you wait?” He slides a hand down to one graceful wrist. Squeezes. “You want me to make you beg for it?”
“Yes. Is that…”
“Oh,” Erik says, “I think I can manage that,” and steps a little closer to him, invading his space; hears the gasp.