fic: as the wind comes off the ocean
And now we can get back to all the other things in progress that were interrupted by the 500 Miles beast. Here, have some Erik/Charles porn.
Title: As The Wind Comes Off The Ocean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7,550
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel, not me! Title from the Foxboro Hot Tubs “Highway 1.” Tiny little joke for Green Day fans; both the currently-planned Erik interludes will be FHT songs.
Summary: An Erik POV interlude, the morning after Keep In Mind I'll Be There For You. Kink negotiation, breakfast in bed, comfort, champagne and orange juice, intercrural sex, promises and kisses exchanged.
I've got my friends and a sharkskin jacket
nothing to lose
gonna live it up ’til I die
I'm alive…
Erik awakens first, the following morning.
Of course he does. Charles is exhausted, worn thin inside and out; his sleeping presence, at the back of Erik’s head as ever these days, feels like gossamer, spider-silk, the memory of the scent of tea. Not tea itself.
The blinds have remained considerately closed-and it is considerate; Tony Stark’s ridiculous house could’ve popped them wide and flooded the room with harsh brightness-but the air is temperate and soothing. Erik’s got a decent internal clock, always has, and despite the indeterminate dimness he guesses that it’s about ten in the morning. Later than he likes to sleep; later than he likes to indulge himself.
Charles is curled up very small beside him, against him, head on Erik’s shoulder, one hand on Erik’s chest. Erik’s own hand is wrapped loosely around that wrist, over tendon and bone. Charles doesn’t stir; Erik doesn’t move.
There’s an irregular ring of bruises, light ones, around that wrist, under his hand. Another matching ring on the other wrist, more on Charles’s ankles. The marks of restraints, cuffs, metal holding him down. At Erik’s command.
That thought makes him shiver, though he pushes it back almost instantly, submerging it in others: the solid comfort of Charles being with him, the metal crookedness of the bedframe reflecting their exertions, his own contented limbs. Charles doesn’t need to feel anything else. And it’s not anything those blue eyes should have to deal with. It’s Erik’s own problem, that raw edge of discomfort at being one of those men.
A man giving orders, commands, being called sir. Pushing another body to the floor. Leaving bruises. He’s seen that elsewhere. In another life.
It’s not that he doesn’t love giving Charles what he needs. And he knows how hard it is for Charles to ask; how close Charles had come to not asking that first time, all stubborn pride and self-reliance. I can’t, that Oxford-accented voice had admitted, medieval towers cracking, as Erik’s metal coiled hard around his arms. I can’t just ask for-I’ve spent too long not giving in to anyone-
He blinks, through the dusty pale light, and sees Charles again the way that Erik’d found him the day before: unmoving on the floor, bent in on himself like crumpled origami, weightless and silent.
Never again, he vows, forcefully enough that Charles makes a soft sound in his sleep. “Shh,” Erik whispers, and rubs his thumb over the back of that wrist. Hush. I am here.
Charles stills again, peacefulness coming at the touch. Erik sighs, but carefully, not dislodging him.
He does love Charles. He knows that he does. And he loves the trust that Charles offers him, bright and shining in the face of Erik’s bemused cynicism. Charles will get on his knees and let Erik tie him down and beg for release and tremble at each touch of Erik’s hand, because Charles wants to, because Charles believes on some fundamental profound level that Erik will not abuse that trust, will never hurt him.
He could. He could hurt Charles so easily. Charles could stop him, could hurt him, as well, but won’t. Or probably won’t. Erik’s under no illusions; Charles is more breakable than he wants to be or lets on, and all of this is predicated on the thin ice-sheet that’s Charles’s active rational consent. The consent won’t be retracted, but the panic, that panic from the first evening, or the second afternoon, might shatter the surface at any time.
Oddly, that’s a reassuring thought. Charles could stop him. And it is about consent: Erik doesn’t have to be one of those faceless brutal men, the ones he’s seen too many of. He’s himself, Erik Lehnsherr, and Charles has chosen him to ask for this.
No one else, Charles had said. Had then proceeded to hurt himself, keeping that particular promise.
Erik’s hand tightens just a fraction over the bruises. Affection, frustration, possessiveness, admiration, love: too damn complicated, he thinks, but that thought comes with a crackle of challenge too. He’s never been afraid of complicated.
He is afraid, not of himself losing Charles because he won’t allow that to happen, but of Charles letting himself be lost. Too ready to be hurt, to deny himself, because Charles is used to self-denial, a paradox but one Erik understands, if not quite in the same way.
Charles could have everything, if he wanted to take it. Money, privilege, the life he’s been born to, the myriad advantages of his telepathy. Charles likes luxury, fine scotch, expensive if carelessly old-fashioned clothes. But that liking’s only indulged because it can be; Charles, deep down, hides his real wants and needs and desires behind a shell that Erik suspects is harder even than his own, for all the external fluffy friendliness and compassion.
His form of self-denial’s always been born from necessity, the mission above all. It’s not the same. But it’s equally about self-preservation, he thinks: they understand that, maybe, in each other.
Charles sighs, shivers; Erik folds an arm around him, drawing him closer. Instinctive.
But Charles shivers again, and this time Erik feels it too, the mental glint of a watch, ostentatious and heavy and full of intricate engineering marvels. He’d be intrigued, if the metal weren’t coming closer, with purpose.
He feels himself tense, angry. It’s a familiar emotion; he’s angry all the time, at the injustices of the world both specific and widespread, at the man called Shaw, at Charles for being so irritatingly optimistic, at himself for not being enough to safeguard all the optimists he can’t help but love, his mother and his father and Charles again.
But this time it’s less familiar, because he’s come so damn close to failure here too and he’s felt the cold around his heart at the sight of Charles’s bandaged arm and he can’t let that happen and the whole room tightens up with intensity, pens and coins and screws and bolts and the humming of the bones of the earth below-
Tony, Charles murmurs, not really waking. The name’s less of a word, more of a multilayered sensory impression, the knotted glowing swirl of memories and thoughts and desires both immediate and faded that’s the way Charles perceives identity. Even more than half asleep, that brilliant mind can pick out both the individual approaching and his purpose; Charles mumbles something about wanting to talk to Erik and breakfast, and drifts back into dreams while Erik wonders all over again at the spectacular limitless glory that’s his silent power.
A tiny scrap of telepathic attention sits in the back of his head, watching but not really, eyes half-shut like a drowsing kitten, as Erik kisses slightly parted lips and swings his legs carefully out of bed. Not active, not while Charles isn’t focusing, but friendly. Affectionate.
Erik, who ought by rights to hate this invasion of his personal mental space, catches himself smiling instead. Charles. Here. Still here.
He pulls on the robe from the connected guest bathroom, for lack of anything less sticky, and opens the door and steps outside before the knock can come. Stark regards him for a second, hand raised; Erik wishes momentarily that he’d bothered to put on the clothing anyway, instead of fluffy white cotton.
“Right,” Stark says, “well, I’m guessing you’d be a lot more panicked if Charles wasn’t all right, so, is he? More or less.”
“More or less.” And then, because even if he holds a grudge against the man for not noticing how not all right those blue eyes’d been, Stark is Charles’s friend and Charles will want them to make an attempt to get along, he adds, “Sleeping. He said something about…breakfast.”
“No, that was me. I was thinking you two would probably need sustenance. Energy. After all, you’ve been doing things I’ve been trying very hard, and I do mean hard, not to think about in my guest room since yesterday. Eggs?”
“…eggs,” Erik says. Okay. Yes. It is a good idea, much as he hates to admit it. “One moment.”
He ducks back inside. Charles has wriggled over onto the other side of the bed, into the warm hollow left by Erik’s body, but other than that, shows no signs of stirring. Charles?
The sunbeam-kitten presence in his head yawns. Hmm…
Would you like breakfast?
A faint shrug, not physical, but contemplative. Possibly…
“You don’t feel up to moving?” He sits on the side of the bed. Puts a hand out, touching one freckle-sparkled shoulder, just because he can. Are you in any pain? Tell me.
No. Or…if you want me to be honest, I’m a bit sore. But that’s only tiredness and your rather impressive…well, your rather impressive everything. I’m not hurt. Not now. “Breakfast would likely be helpful, though.” One blue eye peeks up at him from the depths of the pillow; he gets the mental impression that Charles likes his hand there and likes that Erik likes it too.
He puts more weight into the touch, given that. Not much. But enough to earn a shy tendril of pleasure, wandering up through both their thoughts.
“Yes, all right…we are not having sex again at this specific moment. Certainly not with him outside the door.” And, more quietly, private as barred iron gates, swung just wide enough for Charles and no one else: I don’t want to leave you if you’re in pain.
I’ll be fine, love. The edge of a smile ventures out to join the visible eye. I’ll stay here and recuperate. “And I’d not have any problem with scandalizing Tony, you realize. Not that very much can. Were you thinking about sex with me, then?”
“Often,” Erik agrees, because it’s decidedly the case, “and I’ll be back in ten minutes. Stay exactly here.” And here.
Of course. The incorporeal wisp of kitten-fur brushes along his senses again, soft and flexible. Erik?
“Hmm?” He’d taken his hand off Charles’s shoulder, getting up, searching for wearable clothes. He comes back to the bed. “Not enough?”
Charles hesitates, and there’s a quivering little swirl of emotion, the sense of the bottom dropping off beneath dark water, unseen and unpredicted.
“I can stay.” If you’re still off-balance-
No… “Not because I don’t want you to. Because I do. And I also want to be all right. Come back quickly, possibly.”
“Five minutes, then. Also…” He glances around the room. There’s not much to work with, but he’s always been good at improvising. And a strand of rusty morning sunlight glints off stray metal on the floor: his own pocket paper-clips, tumbled loose sometime in the urgency.
“Wrist, please.”
Both sapphire eyes blink at him this time, when Charles pushes himself up on an elbow. But that’s not an argument; Charles can hear exactly what he’s thinking, and is already answering with the yes.
Only one? Or-
“Only one. In case you need to get up, or get a drink of water, or-anything. But you’ll feel it, while I’m gone.” He laces the paper-clips around that offered wrist, drawing the loops down with a thought, enjoying the slide of his pet metal along surrendered skin. Too tight?
No, that’s good… Charles sounds both more distracted and more focused now, eyes dark for a reason that isn’t sleep. Erik, I-thank you. This helps.
“Then you’ll wear it constantly. And if I give you an order-” With a tug at the captive wrist, to demonstrate. “-you’ll follow it.” He pulls the wrist down into Charles’s lap, so that fingers land on the hardening length of his cock; permits a soft moan, a stroke or two, before he pins the hand back in place on the pillow above dark hair. “Clear?” Only if you want to. If there’s anything to which you object, you’ll let me know.
Yes, sir. “Constantly? Even after-when we leave?”
He pauses. He’d not been thinking about that. Only about ensuring that Charles would have an anchor, in the wake of near-disaster. “Is that something you’d like?”
I…don’t know. I think yes but- “But what I’d like and what’s practical…” Charles turns his head, studies his wrist, doesn’t try to resist the hold. “I can’t feel this way all the time. I need to-I need it to be a bit less intense if we’re in public. If I’m going to be any kind of use to you, and to others. And I need that, too.”
Erik considers this for a moment. Some part-in fact, a rather large and vocal part-of his heart wants to keep Charles here, in bed and safe where no Victor Creeds of the world will ever touch him again, no evil stepfathers will lurk in the shadows, no new scars will ever mar playful freckle-sprays along an arm. Here, with Erik’s metal holding him and teasing him and keeping him on the edge of ecstasy, until he knows nothing but bliss, agonizing pleasure and exquisite pain and sweet surrender to Erik’s claim.
But Charles would, in time, resent him for it. And he understands: like himself, Charles won’t be content with anything less than reshaping the world.
He says, “I love you,” because that’s everything he’s thinking. And sees the answering smile.
“All right, then. I’ll…think of something. How do you feel about rings?” Something removable, from time to time, if Charles needs that; something less dramatic than wrist cuffs or collars, but still present, tangible on a finger, encircling skin and bone.
“I could feel excited about a ring. One. If you ask me for that.” Erik, is this-are you asking-are you saying you want to-it’s not that sort of ring, you don’t mean-?
It IS a promise. He’d not quite meant it a moment ago, simply searching for a solution. But he means it now.
He can’t promise many other things; there’s too much unknown, too much left to face. Shaw. His mission. Charles’s hopes for the future. He can’t say that it means what Charles-what they both-might want it to mean, complete with wedding-vows and ink on a marriage license; that’s not even legal, not that he cares about following ludicrously biased and outdated laws. But he can’t promise forever when he doesn’t know what he’ll have left to give.
But it is as much of a promise as he can make. Everything he can give, offered up to Charles at this moment. If Charles wants him.
I love you, Charles says, blinking like he’s trying not to cry, Erik’s paper-clips coiled happily around his wrist. Yes.
And Erik kisses him there in the glowing light of morning, and marvels at the taste of Charles’s lips on his. At the feeling of that yes in his head, affirmation that bursts like fireworks through his heart, and then settles into his bones and blood and stays there, reinforced with every beat.
At this point there’s a shout from the hallway-“If you two’re having sex right now, I’m not waiting for you!”-and Charles starts laughing and Erik ponders how angry those sapphire eyes might be if Stark’s watch accidentally smacks its owner in the face, and whether the satisfaction’d be worth it.
“Breakfast,” Charles says cheerfully, “sir. And…not that angry. As long as you don’t do it hard. Tony is a friend, you know.”
“He’s still not forgiven.” One last kiss, standing up; he leaves Charles curled naked in the center of the wide soft bed, all flushed skin and elegant curves and fading love-marks that aren’t incongruous at all. They stain his throat, his wrists, his hips, with the brands of desire; and he looks so perfectly like propriety defiled that Erik very nearly turns around at the door.
Go on, I’m hungry.
“And demanding. Do you need to be reminded of your place, Charles?” That one’s not serious-Charles’s place is right at his side-and they both know it, but it has the desired effect nevertheless, which is a tiny gasp at the images currently at the deliberate forefront of Erik’s mind.
No, sir.
Love you. “Just for that…both hands.” This will no doubt make sleep somewhat less comfortable, but Charles doesn’t mind and Erik wants him to feel it. This they can’t do in public, or even every day, but the faint edge of shakiness remains cold in their shared depths, and Charles needs the anchor right now.
The paper-clips thin out and coil around both wrists and fuse together. Charles can move his arms, but can’t separate them.
“Going to the kitchen!” Tony yells, from the hall.
Charles grins; shouts back, No you’re not, you’re trying to eavesdrop through the door! and Erik shakes his head and gets up, running a hand over the fine bones of the nearest freckled ankle, and pulls on crumpled clothing and takes some pride in opening the door quickly enough that Stark almost falls over.
“Not very friendly of you, Lehnsherr. Morning, Charles.”
Morning!
“I’m not very friendly. Breakfast?”
“Yes you are,” Charles says from the bed. “Well. Actually, no, you’re not. Never mind.”
“Breakfast yes. I make excellent omelettes. Peppers, tomatoes, aged cheddar cheese…”
“Just show me where everything is,” Erik grumbles, and uses the watch to haul Stark out of the doorway so that he’ll stop trying to peek into the room. They have food to prepare. For Charles. Who is his, and not to be peeked at.
Out in the laid-back but casually expensive kitchen, the world’s bright with sunshine and sleek countertops and gleaming equipment. Erik hates to admit it, but he likes the way the pots and pans hum and chime in his mind.
“So. Eggs?”
“Right here.” Stark dives into the cavernous refrigerator, pauses, looks gleeful. “Mimosas?”
“What?”
“Champagne and orange juice? You know, that thing that people drink in the morning? Kind of two decades ago, style-wise, but very tasty?”
“…you want to put champagne in orange juice and drink it. In the morning.”
“Charles likes them.”
“I…fine.”
“Huh. Didn’t actually expect that to work. Good to know. Slice this pepper for me?”
Erik glares at the pepper. Imagines it as a certain Stark body part. Enjoys himself.
“Thank you. You know, I’d’ve been happy to sleep with him, if you weren’t there. But-”
“I can put this knife through your skull.”
“Okay, you’re very frightening, I can see that. Does Charles really go for the alpha-male type? Because I always pictured him with, you know, someone nice. Going on dates at libraries and bringing him petri dishes with rare flower DNA or something, I don’t know. Tomato?”
“What? Oh…all right…” Libraries? Petri dishes? Dates? He’s never been on a date in his life. Wouldn’t know where to begin.
He looks at his hands. At the knife he’s just been using to threaten his irritatingly unflappable companion. He’s got old scars, nicks and lines, jagged souvenirs of violent encounters. He’s capable of inflicting great pain. Knows precisely where to apply the right amount of pressure for any desired result.
Does Charles like nice men?
He reaches out, surreptitiously, to find the recognizable metal of his paper-clips. They’re warm with the indefinable sense of Charles’s skin. Charles, who must be drifting in and out of sleep, sends back an indistinct wave of contented recognition, but no words.
“Okay,” Stark observes, appearing at his elbow, “I said chop the tomato, not butcher it. It didn’t deserve that.”
He isn’t going to apologize. “I’m certain you have more.”
“As a matter of fact I do. Behave yourself with this one. What I was trying to say was, Charles turned me down, he said you were what he needed, and I hope he’s right because if you hurt him in any way I will hunt you down and I will use all of the very impressive means at my disposal to make your life hell, are we clear?”
Erik blinks. That sentence, though delivered in the same casual tone as all the previous, is decidedly not flippant. And Stark’s eyes are deadly serious, even as one hand cracks eggs into the pan. The moment ought to feel ridiculous. It doesn’t.
“Yes,” he says, and in that instant, in that kitchen, they completely understand each other. “What did you do to Victor Creed?”
Stark displays a dazzling grin. “Well, Charles already handled it-and that was brilliant, by the way, did he tell you what he did? I wanted to applaud, because honestly that man deserves telepathically implanted impotence if anyone does-but I did what I could. Got into his bank accounts, and his personal calendar, you know he works as security, kind of a thug for hire, so I switched around all the dates and times and locations. No one wants a bodyguard who can’t show up on time.”
“Diabolical of you,” Erik agrees, approving of it. “I take it Charles doesn’t know.”
“Not a word. How do you feel about bacon?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“Ah. How do you feel about turkey bacon?”
“How many types of bacon do you keep in this refrigerator?”
“Five. Can you make this pan heat up any faster?”
He can, and does, and tries not to feel too smug about the begrudgingly impressed reaction. “Hmm,” Stark says, and flips an omelette creation onto a plate with flawless ease. “Maybe I should hire you. You could be useful.”
“I’m not your personal kitchen appliance.”
“I meant at Stark Industries. We could use a man with some intuitive understanding of metals. Molecular bonding, electromagnetic forces…think about it. Here, take this.”
Erik, balancing a plate and a pitcher of fizzy orange juice, inquires, “You’re staying here?” and then instantly wants to kick himself for the question. It’s not as if he wants Stark back in the room with himself and a sleepily pliant and very naked Charles. It’s not as if he even likes Stark. He doesn’t like people. He doesn’t have friends.
He’s not thinking about the job offer either. That’s a question about the future, again. And he can’t. Not while Sebastian Shaw’s draped over that future like a vicious shroud.
“No, go on, I’ll be down in the garage. You take care of him.” Not only about this morning; no need to be a telepath to pick up that undercurrent.
Erik says, calmly, “Always,” and goes back down the hall, to bring Charles breakfast and watch blue eyes blink, awakening, into a smile.
Alone in the hallway, feet making no sound on the luxurious golden wood floor and plush scattered area rugs, he can’t help thinking once more about nice men. About what Charles would’ve wanted, had wanted, from life, before the CIA’d ever requested his aid, before Charles himself had plunged into a freezing black ocean and pulled Erik up to the surface and demanded that they both know they’d never be alone. Before Charles had, without hesitation, joined their lives together.
He pushes open the door. His metal purrs back at him with satisfied vigilance; Charles is genuinely asleep, and doesn’t react. Fingerprint bruises wink up from one visible hipbone, half-obscured by a drift of sheet. And Erik stands there in the doorway, simply looking, while his heart aches strangely behind its cage of bone.
He’s never had much patience for anything simple and clean and nice, for anything less than strong. For anyone refusing to embrace their full potential. For any person foolish enough to hope that the world isn’t broken, that humanity isn’t flawed. To believe otherwise is naïve and dangerous; people are useful when they have uses, and some men need to die, and trust is a luxury belonging to those who’ve never been wounded.
But Charles has been wounded. And Charles trusts him, even in the face of all of Erik’s anger and power and pain.
And the world’s more complicated than he wants to believe, as Charles would no doubt remind him. Sebastian Shaw is a mutant. One of them. And Erik’s own parents hadn’t been.
Charles’s family hadn’t been mutants either. Erik would equally hesitate, except in the strictest sense, to call them human.
Charles stirs, waking, or near to, layers of beautiful complications like multifaceted iron roses; no, he thinks, changing the comparison. Like roses, yes, but living ones, wrapped around an iron trellis, vibrant and vital and blooming and green. To mistake vitality for weakness, however, would be an error. Those vines are coiled and powerful and thorned with old pain and raw telepathic strength.
He’s fortunate, he thinks very quietly, that they’ve become entwined with him. With his heart.
And he’s willing to be Charles’s latticework forever. Charles is, after all, holding him too.
Lovely, Charles says, yawning. Erik. You’re beautiful. And so’re your metaphors.
Erik, uncomfortable with this, announces, “I’ve brought you an omelette.”
Charles blinks, not physically. Thank you.
“Don’t thank me yet. You’ll need to sit up to eat.” You can sit up, correct?
“Hmm…” Oh, probably, yes…
“That bad?” I’m…sorry I hurt you? That’s a multilayered thought: regret for pushing so hard, regret that it’d been necessary, lack of regret that he had done it, relief that he’d done enough, brought Charles back to laugh and tease him and push him in return.
You didn’t hurt me, Charles murmurs in reply, and phantom kisses ruffle across his mind, and then the physical version follows, lips firm and decided against his. “See? I can sit up perfectly well.”
Erik does not point out the softness of the bed, or the tell-tale soreness of thoroughly-stretched muscles that aren’t his. This is Charles being honest with him, hiding nothing, letting him feel precisely how bad or not bad it is.
No secrets. He rather likes that. For a change.
Charles has looped still-bound arms around his neck, and is kissing his ear, which turns into nibbling his ear, plus a hand tugging up his turtleneck. Erik doesn’t object to the physical display-Charles naked and affectionate is one of the best things he’s ever known in his life-but he does say Wait, when the hands wander lower and nearly make him drop the plate.
Hmm?
“I just…stop that…no, seriously, Charles, please. An order, if you’d like.” I mean I love you. He stops to look into blue eyes, dark as a summer twilight, looking back at his. The bandage on that arm, the bandage that’s just brushed against his back, is very white and clean. His heart does that foolish little twirl again at the sight.
“I love you,” Charles offers out loud, but there’s a retreat in his thoughts, the tropical-ocean waves coiling up tight and not breaking freely onto the sand.
“Don’t,” Erik tells him, and-probably too clumsily for Charles’s articulate power-lets him hear those thoughts as well: no secrets, no holding back, desire. Charles flushes; looks away, despite the nod that says he’s heard. More, then. Charles not meeting his gaze is unacceptable.
He says, “I want you. I also want you to eat. You’ve lost weight.” You’re beautiful. But I’m-concerned. You can hear me; hear that, then.
And Charles does, with a quicksilver dance across his mind, a startled comprehension, a smile. And then looks up with a real if small grin. Thank you. Then. “I do seem to be thanking you rather a lot. But you’ve been marvelous, Erik. Sir.”
“I enjoy you thanking me,” Erik says dryly, which earns the expected huff of amusement, but he adds I also enjoy being marvelous for you and means it, which gets another smile, and a wiggle of hands in their metal bondage.
“Do you want me to eat with this on, then? I’m not sure that’ll go well, but I can try.”
“Actually…” He’s had an idea. Just now. Looking at that smile, those bound wrists. Thinking about what Charles needs. Sends an image, neatly defined.
“You…what?”
“You heard me.” He forms the pictures, vividly displayed, as he speaks. Charles with hands behind his back. Naked. Waiting. Erik’s fingers in his mouth, feeding him by hand, bite by bite when Erik decides to give them.
Oh god. The eyes’re enormous, black and blue as nighttime seas, now. Erik, you-you want to-you want me to-I’ve never-
You did say not in public. And I understand. But here, and now…you’re mine, Charles. And you need this.
Charles actually gasps, as if the words have a physical impact. Yes, sir.
“Here, then. On your knees.” On the bed. He won’t make Charles get on the floor. At least not at the moment.
Oh- A smile, those expressive lips quirking upward. “Yes, all right.” Like this? Sitting back, legs folded up, hands neatly folded too, in his lap; “Yes,” Erik tells him, voice unaccountably hoarse. Like that.
He feeds Charles carefully, methodically, a bite at a time; Charles obediently opens his mouth for tidbits when Erik brings them to his lips, and chews, and swallows. After the fifth bite, he pauses, runs his thumb over those lips, and thinks Good, and Charles sighs.
Those seaglass-blue eyes’ve gone darker, drifting, a touch unfocused. Erik smiles.
Love?
Mmm…
You’re doing so well. Another bite, smaller this time; he runs a hand over Charles’s hip, proprietary, tracing spirals of freckles, and feels the shiver. “Drink?”
Charles raises eyebrows when Erik holds the glass for him, but doesn’t protest; doesn’t protest even less when Erik sets a hand in his hair and tugs his head back and makes him swallow more. The merriment’s absolutely bright, though, warring with the arousal in their thoughts. Erik?
He lets go, lets Charles sit up and look at him with perfect laughing submission in those eyes. “Did you have a question?” Are you-
I’m fine! “I was only wondering if you tried this before feeding it to me. Tony seems to believe mimosas are ninety percent champagne and ten percent juice. You may need to offer me more actual protein.”
“Oh.” He doesn’t want to admit that he hadn’t-some sort of vague sense of failure there-but he takes a sip now. And narrowly avoids spraying almost undiluted very potent champagne over both of them as a result. And then says some extremely impolite words about Tony Stark in German.
“Yes, he probably is that, at least that last one. Don’t take it away, I didn’t say I minded. I just wasn’t prepared. May I have more?”
Erik says, “Hmm,” and actually hands over the glass, this time, because he’s a bit worried about inadvertently making Charles choke on bubbly alcohol. Charles manages the sip adroitly despite bound hands, and settles them back in his lap, eyes dancing.
“He did say you’d approve. Should I be concerned?”
“I promise to remain relatively sober while you fuck me, sir,” Charles says, completely straight-faced, and this time it’s only Erik’s reflexes that rescue the food.
Sorry! “Here, I can help with that.”
No, you’re not. “And no, you can’t. You can sit there and think about what you’ve just said.” He finds space for everything on a helpful bedside table, and then feeds Charles a slice of tomato by hand, just because. Charles nibbles gently at his fingers; Erik permits this for a second, then takes the hand away and feeds him a bit more, pieces of bacon and toast and fruit. Charles closes his eyes briefly, the playfulness fading into honest acceptance; Erik touches his throat while he swallows, feeling the vulnerable movement beneath fingertips, knowing that Charles can feel it too.
He rations his own champagne consumption, but lets Charles drink most of the pitcher, in part because the tiny amount of orange juice that’s in there will be good for him, in part because despite Stark’s heavyhanded pouring there’s probably not enough alcohol to get Charles truly drunk, and in part because he’s kind of curious, given that comment and the promise in blue eyes, to see how this might progress. The answer seems to be rather well; Charles ends up wide-eyed and a little breathless, electric shivers running like spark-currents between them every time Erik’s fingers bring food to his mouth, lift the glass for him to drink, tilt his chin a fraction higher.
The morning’s very quiet, all gold and white and anticipatory. Charles is naked and gazing at him with enormous eyes and parted lips, kneeling at Erik’s command in the center of the bed, and the whole world quivers with want, drawn taut as a bowstring.
He runs a hand over Charles’s cheek. Charles closes his eyes, and tilts his head into the caress. He’s completely relaxed at Erik’s touch, a kind of expectant serenity, and just slightly tipsy, judging from the looseness of his motions, the openness of his mind; they could stay this way all day, Erik thinks, could balance on this moment forever.
He says, purposefully gentle but unshakeable, “I’m not going to fuck you, Charles, even if you want me to. I know you’re tired, and you’re sore. But I will take care of you. Understand?”
This earns a soft exhale against his hand. The answer’s not quite in words, though it is a reply: a silk-fold tangle of wistfulness and want and unfulfilled need and curiosity and faith in Erik, belief that Erik will indeed take care of him, as promised.
“All right, then.” I love you, Charles. Loud enough to be heard through all the surrender. Throughout the sunshine-and-salt-spray universe.
He brings Charles down onto the bed, that head settling on his shoulder, and Erik folds his arm around so that his fingers rest over a temple, at the corner of an eye. Charles closes both eyes, trustingly; breathes out and shifts against him, arousal pressing into Erik’s hip; not asking, merely instinctive craving, seeking his Dominant’s touch.
Charles does know the terms, he realizes all over again. Has read about them. Wants to use them. That hadn’t been exactly his thought; he doesn’t think in those terms, though he suspects he may from now on.
Charles moves against him again, restive. “Shh,” Erik tells him, and breathes a kiss to the arch of one eyebrow. “I did promise. I’ll take care of you.”
He takes the flushed thick length of Charles’s erection in hand, slow unhurried strokes. Charles is already close, awash in ecstasy and champagne-bubble bliss and the thrill of finally being touched right there; Erik sends over an thought, a command, and one hand drifts across to find Erik’s cock in return. Charles is too out of it for any proper rhythm, so it’s more like random caresses, but that’s all right; he feels himself tighten and tense at that thought too, the fact that he can do this to and for the man he loves. He’s the one who can push Charles this far. Can hold him through it.
Charles whimpers indistinctly when Erik’s hand pauses; not an objection, they’re beyond that, but dismay at the loss of sensation. Erik stops to kiss him again, thinking very clearly we’re all right, we’re good, you’re so good for me, be patient, and the disquiet ebbs at the certainty.
He puts Charles on his back, not held down by anything except wordless words. Sits up, flings his clothing across the room, grabs the lube, slides back between spread pale thighs and their galaxy of cinnamon stars. Runs a hand over Charles’s cock, rough enough to assert command but not enough to hurt. Charles sighs and pushes up into the caress, a response and not a request. He’ll take what Erik gives him; they both know that.
He wants very badly to be inside Charles again, to feel the exquisite slick drag of tight muscles around him, along every inch. But he knows precisely how well-used those muscles were, last night. Knows how exhausted Charles feels, and also how easy it’d be to take him like this, so far under that he’d accept it all, whatever Erik wants to do with him, for him, to him. Charles is broadcasting worn-out little hums of pleasure and soreness like shivering rainbows, bright and weary and likely unintentional; at the point where self-discipline slips and blurs into Erik’s discipline, the lightwaves escape, radiant and suffused with unbearable bliss, ribboning around the room.
They tug at his bones. Like coming home.
Amused, he thinks that perhaps Charles was right, that very first time: the invitation, though inadvertent, is still an initiation. Charles in fact isn’t good at patiently submitting.
Charles flinches. And the room feels darker, even though it’s not. Not words, precisely, but the emotion comes across in the dwindling of rainbows.
“No,” Erik says, and then amends that, instantly. “Don’t hold back. I was only thinking that you’re beautiful, Charles.” I like this. I like you, like this. Brilliant.
Charles is, evidently, self-aware enough to lift an eyebrow at him, albeit only a mental one.
“I mean it.” With a hand back on Charles’s ready cock for good measure, pull and twist and stroke over the dripping tip the way Charles likes it; and he hears the gasp and feels the shudder of response. Successful tactics, then. Excellent.
Tactics, indeed.
I thought you weren’t talking. He pushes those well-muscled runner’s legs apart; they fall open easily for him. “I don’t recall saying you could.”
Charles’s eyes get impossibly wide, oceans caught in saucers, at that. Yes, sir.
You always can if you need to. “Good.” He spills lube over his hand, strokes it along himself, watches Charles watching him. His own hand on his cock is good, but somehow it’s better with that shining gaze, those little eager inhales, urging him on.
So he makes a show of it. Slow and drawn-out, slicking himself up, letting the head push slowly through cupped fingers, hand sliding obscene and wet up and down the shaft. Charles actually sobs in frustration and tries to move his hands, apparently forgetting that Erik’s got them firmly anchored to the headboard. Paper-clips are such wonderful inventions, he thinks, and grins, too widely, displaying teeth.
“Please,” Charles gasps, voice cracking, please- and Erik shakes his head and answers “Not very obedient of you, love,” and Charles makes another sound like a sob and his cock jumps and leaves wetness smeared across his stomach, filthy decoration over fair skin and exotic sparkles.
Erik grins again, keeps those hands firmly secured even as they open and close imploringly, and then kneels between Charles’s thighs, slickness spread over them as well; the touch of his fingers, so close and yet not straying, elicits another moan.
He toys with Charles’s balls, the drawn-up tense weight of them; trails a wet finger lower, exploring the most private spaces of Charles’s body, skimming over the tight pink bud of muscle but not entering inside, even as Charles pants and swears and grows incoherent with need.
“I told you,” he breathes, lifting one leg to rest over his shoulder, speaking to the line of that knee, the hollow at the joint, the scent of Charles and sex and gold-painted mornings and cotton sheets, “I’m not planning to fuck you today,” and Charles whimpers at the denial, not comprehending, eyes bright with desperate tears that aren’t quite falling.
“Say it,” he says, making it a command, “tell me yes.”
And Charles whispers Yes, sir, and shivers everywhere and shuts his eyes as the tears fall and then goes quiet, all resistance gone, control completely given over and replaced with Erik’s, anything Erik wants to tell him, yes or no or wait or I want to hear you scream, wholly submerged in it.
This is tricky, he knows: this is the place where he could hurt Charles the most, with one unconsidered act, one ill-timed command. Charles would say yes to anything, has given him everything, and that courage astounds him even as it humbles him with the responsibility.
He does want to take care of Charles. Every atom of his body shouts it from inside: mine, mine to protect, I love this man.
So he coaxes the other leg up too, fitting his cock between them, pushing Charles’s thighs together; Charles moans faintly at the new sensation. “Watch,” Erik demands of him. Watch.
And he pushes between Charles’s thighs, feeling the slide of skin along skin, the delicious sensation of it. He’s long enough that, when he pushes forward, his cock rubs against Charles’s straining erection, and the sight’s intoxicating, himself and Charles pressed together as his weight bears down, as he nudges legs further back and closer together for more friction, and when he checks the blue eyes have listened and are gazing at the spectacle, enormous and mesmerized.
“You like this?” He does it again, and Charles shudders beneath him. You like watching my cock, Charles, you want to watch me come like this, on you, all over you-
Charles gasps, and his entire body jerks, and Erik wonders for a second if he’s going to come like that, on the spot; but there’s a sensation like grasping at handholds, and a flicker of sense-memory that isn’t his but is of his voice, not until I say you can, and Charles clinging to it with a vise-grip.
Perfect, Erik tells him, and fucks him harder, rougher, hips slamming together, the wet sounds of skin on skin, lube and slickness and the grip of those thighs, the heat of the blood in Charles’s aching erection, swollen and heavy with the lack of relief, and it’s that thought that sends him over the edge, that and the tiny broken cry Charles makes when Erik’s hands bite down hard on his legs; and the orgasm’s like the splintering of the world into rainbows, pulses of color, jets of white stickiness spurting out over Charles’s stomach, Charles’s cock, Charles’s naked body.
That body is shaking beneath him, making small helpless sounds. Erik flings a tendril of uncoordinated power at the wrist cuffs, pulls those bound hands up and makes them complicit in the position, using Charles’s hands to hold Charles’s legs in place; bends down and whispers, “Now,” and echoes now just in case, and Charles stops breathing and comes apart and comes on command, the peak flooding over them both like a rolling wave, vast and depthless and almost painful in its long-pent-up release.
The waves roll and thunder and pull him in, and Erik can barely breathe, some part of him caught up in it and dragged helplessly into one final trembling crash, another piece of him watching in awe as Charles’s cock tightens and jerks and splashes white across his own body, mingling with Erik’s climax, covering him with it. Some last fraction of self-control tells him that he can’t collapse in ecstasy yet, that he has to inhale and exhale and take care of Charles, and he does retain enough sanity to snap open the makeshift cuffs and let the paper-clips tumble to the mattress along with all of those freed limbs.
Charles, he gets out, panting. Charles, I love you, I love you, can you answer me, can you say something, please-
I love you. Surprisingly coherent, or it would be surprising if Erik could find any energy with which to be surprised. Instead he just rolls over onto his back and gathers Charles close and holds him, cradling that head to his shoulder, not caring that their bodies are becoming messily stuck together.
Are you-all right, was that-?
That was… Charles pauses, laughs, coruscating wonder like the sun. That was everything I’ve ever wanted, I think. Erik, I love you. So very much.
I love you, Charles. Sentences’re still an effort, but he’s managing well enough considering that Charles has just literally made him come so hard he’s seen rainbows. “We should…you…shower…” He taps a hand over Charles’s back, feeling the tangible warmth of him. Then kisses him, the top of that fluffy-haired and slightly sweat-damp head. Because he can. Because Charles is in his arms and is his and is safe and is laughing.
“Shower,” Charles agrees, “and then we should pack, and see about flights home, we should check on the children, and we’ve probably trespassed on Tony’s hospitality long enough…” Not yet, though. Can you hold me? Only for a moment.
Of course. I like holding you. Arms tightly around that shorter muscular frame, breathing in the scent of Charles’s hair, feeling the thump of their heartbeats, the blood in their veins, the cool joyful metal of the beachfront house, the world around them, drenched in California sun. Everything you’ve ever wanted, you said?
“Yes,” Charles says, and turns his head to press a kiss to Erik’s shoulder, lazy and affectionate and fulfilled. You and me together. This-means everything.
Erik holds him, and considers that statement. Considers that Charles, in the face of his own scars and personal battlefields, has been the one to make it. Contemplates the man called Shaw, and other scars. Commitment, and promises.
He finds Charles’s hand with his own. Summons the topmost eager paper-clip from the floor; it leaps up promptly at his call.
He loops it around that freckled finger like a kiss, and answers, “Yes.”
Title: As The Wind Comes Off The Ocean
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 7,550
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel, not me! Title from the Foxboro Hot Tubs “Highway 1.” Tiny little joke for Green Day fans; both the currently-planned Erik interludes will be FHT songs.
Summary: An Erik POV interlude, the morning after Keep In Mind I'll Be There For You. Kink negotiation, breakfast in bed, comfort, champagne and orange juice, intercrural sex, promises and kisses exchanged.
I've got my friends and a sharkskin jacket
nothing to lose
gonna live it up ’til I die
I'm alive…
Erik awakens first, the following morning.
Of course he does. Charles is exhausted, worn thin inside and out; his sleeping presence, at the back of Erik’s head as ever these days, feels like gossamer, spider-silk, the memory of the scent of tea. Not tea itself.
The blinds have remained considerately closed-and it is considerate; Tony Stark’s ridiculous house could’ve popped them wide and flooded the room with harsh brightness-but the air is temperate and soothing. Erik’s got a decent internal clock, always has, and despite the indeterminate dimness he guesses that it’s about ten in the morning. Later than he likes to sleep; later than he likes to indulge himself.
Charles is curled up very small beside him, against him, head on Erik’s shoulder, one hand on Erik’s chest. Erik’s own hand is wrapped loosely around that wrist, over tendon and bone. Charles doesn’t stir; Erik doesn’t move.
There’s an irregular ring of bruises, light ones, around that wrist, under his hand. Another matching ring on the other wrist, more on Charles’s ankles. The marks of restraints, cuffs, metal holding him down. At Erik’s command.
That thought makes him shiver, though he pushes it back almost instantly, submerging it in others: the solid comfort of Charles being with him, the metal crookedness of the bedframe reflecting their exertions, his own contented limbs. Charles doesn’t need to feel anything else. And it’s not anything those blue eyes should have to deal with. It’s Erik’s own problem, that raw edge of discomfort at being one of those men.
A man giving orders, commands, being called sir. Pushing another body to the floor. Leaving bruises. He’s seen that elsewhere. In another life.
It’s not that he doesn’t love giving Charles what he needs. And he knows how hard it is for Charles to ask; how close Charles had come to not asking that first time, all stubborn pride and self-reliance. I can’t, that Oxford-accented voice had admitted, medieval towers cracking, as Erik’s metal coiled hard around his arms. I can’t just ask for-I’ve spent too long not giving in to anyone-
He blinks, through the dusty pale light, and sees Charles again the way that Erik’d found him the day before: unmoving on the floor, bent in on himself like crumpled origami, weightless and silent.
Never again, he vows, forcefully enough that Charles makes a soft sound in his sleep. “Shh,” Erik whispers, and rubs his thumb over the back of that wrist. Hush. I am here.
Charles stills again, peacefulness coming at the touch. Erik sighs, but carefully, not dislodging him.
He does love Charles. He knows that he does. And he loves the trust that Charles offers him, bright and shining in the face of Erik’s bemused cynicism. Charles will get on his knees and let Erik tie him down and beg for release and tremble at each touch of Erik’s hand, because Charles wants to, because Charles believes on some fundamental profound level that Erik will not abuse that trust, will never hurt him.
He could. He could hurt Charles so easily. Charles could stop him, could hurt him, as well, but won’t. Or probably won’t. Erik’s under no illusions; Charles is more breakable than he wants to be or lets on, and all of this is predicated on the thin ice-sheet that’s Charles’s active rational consent. The consent won’t be retracted, but the panic, that panic from the first evening, or the second afternoon, might shatter the surface at any time.
Oddly, that’s a reassuring thought. Charles could stop him. And it is about consent: Erik doesn’t have to be one of those faceless brutal men, the ones he’s seen too many of. He’s himself, Erik Lehnsherr, and Charles has chosen him to ask for this.
No one else, Charles had said. Had then proceeded to hurt himself, keeping that particular promise.
Erik’s hand tightens just a fraction over the bruises. Affection, frustration, possessiveness, admiration, love: too damn complicated, he thinks, but that thought comes with a crackle of challenge too. He’s never been afraid of complicated.
He is afraid, not of himself losing Charles because he won’t allow that to happen, but of Charles letting himself be lost. Too ready to be hurt, to deny himself, because Charles is used to self-denial, a paradox but one Erik understands, if not quite in the same way.
Charles could have everything, if he wanted to take it. Money, privilege, the life he’s been born to, the myriad advantages of his telepathy. Charles likes luxury, fine scotch, expensive if carelessly old-fashioned clothes. But that liking’s only indulged because it can be; Charles, deep down, hides his real wants and needs and desires behind a shell that Erik suspects is harder even than his own, for all the external fluffy friendliness and compassion.
His form of self-denial’s always been born from necessity, the mission above all. It’s not the same. But it’s equally about self-preservation, he thinks: they understand that, maybe, in each other.
Charles sighs, shivers; Erik folds an arm around him, drawing him closer. Instinctive.
But Charles shivers again, and this time Erik feels it too, the mental glint of a watch, ostentatious and heavy and full of intricate engineering marvels. He’d be intrigued, if the metal weren’t coming closer, with purpose.
He feels himself tense, angry. It’s a familiar emotion; he’s angry all the time, at the injustices of the world both specific and widespread, at the man called Shaw, at Charles for being so irritatingly optimistic, at himself for not being enough to safeguard all the optimists he can’t help but love, his mother and his father and Charles again.
But this time it’s less familiar, because he’s come so damn close to failure here too and he’s felt the cold around his heart at the sight of Charles’s bandaged arm and he can’t let that happen and the whole room tightens up with intensity, pens and coins and screws and bolts and the humming of the bones of the earth below-
Tony, Charles murmurs, not really waking. The name’s less of a word, more of a multilayered sensory impression, the knotted glowing swirl of memories and thoughts and desires both immediate and faded that’s the way Charles perceives identity. Even more than half asleep, that brilliant mind can pick out both the individual approaching and his purpose; Charles mumbles something about wanting to talk to Erik and breakfast, and drifts back into dreams while Erik wonders all over again at the spectacular limitless glory that’s his silent power.
A tiny scrap of telepathic attention sits in the back of his head, watching but not really, eyes half-shut like a drowsing kitten, as Erik kisses slightly parted lips and swings his legs carefully out of bed. Not active, not while Charles isn’t focusing, but friendly. Affectionate.
Erik, who ought by rights to hate this invasion of his personal mental space, catches himself smiling instead. Charles. Here. Still here.
He pulls on the robe from the connected guest bathroom, for lack of anything less sticky, and opens the door and steps outside before the knock can come. Stark regards him for a second, hand raised; Erik wishes momentarily that he’d bothered to put on the clothing anyway, instead of fluffy white cotton.
“Right,” Stark says, “well, I’m guessing you’d be a lot more panicked if Charles wasn’t all right, so, is he? More or less.”
“More or less.” And then, because even if he holds a grudge against the man for not noticing how not all right those blue eyes’d been, Stark is Charles’s friend and Charles will want them to make an attempt to get along, he adds, “Sleeping. He said something about…breakfast.”
“No, that was me. I was thinking you two would probably need sustenance. Energy. After all, you’ve been doing things I’ve been trying very hard, and I do mean hard, not to think about in my guest room since yesterday. Eggs?”
“…eggs,” Erik says. Okay. Yes. It is a good idea, much as he hates to admit it. “One moment.”
He ducks back inside. Charles has wriggled over onto the other side of the bed, into the warm hollow left by Erik’s body, but other than that, shows no signs of stirring. Charles?
The sunbeam-kitten presence in his head yawns. Hmm…
Would you like breakfast?
A faint shrug, not physical, but contemplative. Possibly…
“You don’t feel up to moving?” He sits on the side of the bed. Puts a hand out, touching one freckle-sparkled shoulder, just because he can. Are you in any pain? Tell me.
No. Or…if you want me to be honest, I’m a bit sore. But that’s only tiredness and your rather impressive…well, your rather impressive everything. I’m not hurt. Not now. “Breakfast would likely be helpful, though.” One blue eye peeks up at him from the depths of the pillow; he gets the mental impression that Charles likes his hand there and likes that Erik likes it too.
He puts more weight into the touch, given that. Not much. But enough to earn a shy tendril of pleasure, wandering up through both their thoughts.
“Yes, all right…we are not having sex again at this specific moment. Certainly not with him outside the door.” And, more quietly, private as barred iron gates, swung just wide enough for Charles and no one else: I don’t want to leave you if you’re in pain.
I’ll be fine, love. The edge of a smile ventures out to join the visible eye. I’ll stay here and recuperate. “And I’d not have any problem with scandalizing Tony, you realize. Not that very much can. Were you thinking about sex with me, then?”
“Often,” Erik agrees, because it’s decidedly the case, “and I’ll be back in ten minutes. Stay exactly here.” And here.
Of course. The incorporeal wisp of kitten-fur brushes along his senses again, soft and flexible. Erik?
“Hmm?” He’d taken his hand off Charles’s shoulder, getting up, searching for wearable clothes. He comes back to the bed. “Not enough?”
Charles hesitates, and there’s a quivering little swirl of emotion, the sense of the bottom dropping off beneath dark water, unseen and unpredicted.
“I can stay.” If you’re still off-balance-
No… “Not because I don’t want you to. Because I do. And I also want to be all right. Come back quickly, possibly.”
“Five minutes, then. Also…” He glances around the room. There’s not much to work with, but he’s always been good at improvising. And a strand of rusty morning sunlight glints off stray metal on the floor: his own pocket paper-clips, tumbled loose sometime in the urgency.
“Wrist, please.”
Both sapphire eyes blink at him this time, when Charles pushes himself up on an elbow. But that’s not an argument; Charles can hear exactly what he’s thinking, and is already answering with the yes.
Only one? Or-
“Only one. In case you need to get up, or get a drink of water, or-anything. But you’ll feel it, while I’m gone.” He laces the paper-clips around that offered wrist, drawing the loops down with a thought, enjoying the slide of his pet metal along surrendered skin. Too tight?
No, that’s good… Charles sounds both more distracted and more focused now, eyes dark for a reason that isn’t sleep. Erik, I-thank you. This helps.
“Then you’ll wear it constantly. And if I give you an order-” With a tug at the captive wrist, to demonstrate. “-you’ll follow it.” He pulls the wrist down into Charles’s lap, so that fingers land on the hardening length of his cock; permits a soft moan, a stroke or two, before he pins the hand back in place on the pillow above dark hair. “Clear?” Only if you want to. If there’s anything to which you object, you’ll let me know.
Yes, sir. “Constantly? Even after-when we leave?”
He pauses. He’d not been thinking about that. Only about ensuring that Charles would have an anchor, in the wake of near-disaster. “Is that something you’d like?”
I…don’t know. I think yes but- “But what I’d like and what’s practical…” Charles turns his head, studies his wrist, doesn’t try to resist the hold. “I can’t feel this way all the time. I need to-I need it to be a bit less intense if we’re in public. If I’m going to be any kind of use to you, and to others. And I need that, too.”
Erik considers this for a moment. Some part-in fact, a rather large and vocal part-of his heart wants to keep Charles here, in bed and safe where no Victor Creeds of the world will ever touch him again, no evil stepfathers will lurk in the shadows, no new scars will ever mar playful freckle-sprays along an arm. Here, with Erik’s metal holding him and teasing him and keeping him on the edge of ecstasy, until he knows nothing but bliss, agonizing pleasure and exquisite pain and sweet surrender to Erik’s claim.
But Charles would, in time, resent him for it. And he understands: like himself, Charles won’t be content with anything less than reshaping the world.
He says, “I love you,” because that’s everything he’s thinking. And sees the answering smile.
“All right, then. I’ll…think of something. How do you feel about rings?” Something removable, from time to time, if Charles needs that; something less dramatic than wrist cuffs or collars, but still present, tangible on a finger, encircling skin and bone.
“I could feel excited about a ring. One. If you ask me for that.” Erik, is this-are you asking-are you saying you want to-it’s not that sort of ring, you don’t mean-?
It IS a promise. He’d not quite meant it a moment ago, simply searching for a solution. But he means it now.
He can’t promise many other things; there’s too much unknown, too much left to face. Shaw. His mission. Charles’s hopes for the future. He can’t say that it means what Charles-what they both-might want it to mean, complete with wedding-vows and ink on a marriage license; that’s not even legal, not that he cares about following ludicrously biased and outdated laws. But he can’t promise forever when he doesn’t know what he’ll have left to give.
But it is as much of a promise as he can make. Everything he can give, offered up to Charles at this moment. If Charles wants him.
I love you, Charles says, blinking like he’s trying not to cry, Erik’s paper-clips coiled happily around his wrist. Yes.
And Erik kisses him there in the glowing light of morning, and marvels at the taste of Charles’s lips on his. At the feeling of that yes in his head, affirmation that bursts like fireworks through his heart, and then settles into his bones and blood and stays there, reinforced with every beat.
At this point there’s a shout from the hallway-“If you two’re having sex right now, I’m not waiting for you!”-and Charles starts laughing and Erik ponders how angry those sapphire eyes might be if Stark’s watch accidentally smacks its owner in the face, and whether the satisfaction’d be worth it.
“Breakfast,” Charles says cheerfully, “sir. And…not that angry. As long as you don’t do it hard. Tony is a friend, you know.”
“He’s still not forgiven.” One last kiss, standing up; he leaves Charles curled naked in the center of the wide soft bed, all flushed skin and elegant curves and fading love-marks that aren’t incongruous at all. They stain his throat, his wrists, his hips, with the brands of desire; and he looks so perfectly like propriety defiled that Erik very nearly turns around at the door.
Go on, I’m hungry.
“And demanding. Do you need to be reminded of your place, Charles?” That one’s not serious-Charles’s place is right at his side-and they both know it, but it has the desired effect nevertheless, which is a tiny gasp at the images currently at the deliberate forefront of Erik’s mind.
No, sir.
Love you. “Just for that…both hands.” This will no doubt make sleep somewhat less comfortable, but Charles doesn’t mind and Erik wants him to feel it. This they can’t do in public, or even every day, but the faint edge of shakiness remains cold in their shared depths, and Charles needs the anchor right now.
The paper-clips thin out and coil around both wrists and fuse together. Charles can move his arms, but can’t separate them.
“Going to the kitchen!” Tony yells, from the hall.
Charles grins; shouts back, No you’re not, you’re trying to eavesdrop through the door! and Erik shakes his head and gets up, running a hand over the fine bones of the nearest freckled ankle, and pulls on crumpled clothing and takes some pride in opening the door quickly enough that Stark almost falls over.
“Not very friendly of you, Lehnsherr. Morning, Charles.”
Morning!
“I’m not very friendly. Breakfast?”
“Yes you are,” Charles says from the bed. “Well. Actually, no, you’re not. Never mind.”
“Breakfast yes. I make excellent omelettes. Peppers, tomatoes, aged cheddar cheese…”
“Just show me where everything is,” Erik grumbles, and uses the watch to haul Stark out of the doorway so that he’ll stop trying to peek into the room. They have food to prepare. For Charles. Who is his, and not to be peeked at.
Out in the laid-back but casually expensive kitchen, the world’s bright with sunshine and sleek countertops and gleaming equipment. Erik hates to admit it, but he likes the way the pots and pans hum and chime in his mind.
“So. Eggs?”
“Right here.” Stark dives into the cavernous refrigerator, pauses, looks gleeful. “Mimosas?”
“What?”
“Champagne and orange juice? You know, that thing that people drink in the morning? Kind of two decades ago, style-wise, but very tasty?”
“…you want to put champagne in orange juice and drink it. In the morning.”
“Charles likes them.”
“I…fine.”
“Huh. Didn’t actually expect that to work. Good to know. Slice this pepper for me?”
Erik glares at the pepper. Imagines it as a certain Stark body part. Enjoys himself.
“Thank you. You know, I’d’ve been happy to sleep with him, if you weren’t there. But-”
“I can put this knife through your skull.”
“Okay, you’re very frightening, I can see that. Does Charles really go for the alpha-male type? Because I always pictured him with, you know, someone nice. Going on dates at libraries and bringing him petri dishes with rare flower DNA or something, I don’t know. Tomato?”
“What? Oh…all right…” Libraries? Petri dishes? Dates? He’s never been on a date in his life. Wouldn’t know where to begin.
He looks at his hands. At the knife he’s just been using to threaten his irritatingly unflappable companion. He’s got old scars, nicks and lines, jagged souvenirs of violent encounters. He’s capable of inflicting great pain. Knows precisely where to apply the right amount of pressure for any desired result.
Does Charles like nice men?
He reaches out, surreptitiously, to find the recognizable metal of his paper-clips. They’re warm with the indefinable sense of Charles’s skin. Charles, who must be drifting in and out of sleep, sends back an indistinct wave of contented recognition, but no words.
“Okay,” Stark observes, appearing at his elbow, “I said chop the tomato, not butcher it. It didn’t deserve that.”
He isn’t going to apologize. “I’m certain you have more.”
“As a matter of fact I do. Behave yourself with this one. What I was trying to say was, Charles turned me down, he said you were what he needed, and I hope he’s right because if you hurt him in any way I will hunt you down and I will use all of the very impressive means at my disposal to make your life hell, are we clear?”
Erik blinks. That sentence, though delivered in the same casual tone as all the previous, is decidedly not flippant. And Stark’s eyes are deadly serious, even as one hand cracks eggs into the pan. The moment ought to feel ridiculous. It doesn’t.
“Yes,” he says, and in that instant, in that kitchen, they completely understand each other. “What did you do to Victor Creed?”
Stark displays a dazzling grin. “Well, Charles already handled it-and that was brilliant, by the way, did he tell you what he did? I wanted to applaud, because honestly that man deserves telepathically implanted impotence if anyone does-but I did what I could. Got into his bank accounts, and his personal calendar, you know he works as security, kind of a thug for hire, so I switched around all the dates and times and locations. No one wants a bodyguard who can’t show up on time.”
“Diabolical of you,” Erik agrees, approving of it. “I take it Charles doesn’t know.”
“Not a word. How do you feel about bacon?”
“I’m Jewish.”
“Ah. How do you feel about turkey bacon?”
“How many types of bacon do you keep in this refrigerator?”
“Five. Can you make this pan heat up any faster?”
He can, and does, and tries not to feel too smug about the begrudgingly impressed reaction. “Hmm,” Stark says, and flips an omelette creation onto a plate with flawless ease. “Maybe I should hire you. You could be useful.”
“I’m not your personal kitchen appliance.”
“I meant at Stark Industries. We could use a man with some intuitive understanding of metals. Molecular bonding, electromagnetic forces…think about it. Here, take this.”
Erik, balancing a plate and a pitcher of fizzy orange juice, inquires, “You’re staying here?” and then instantly wants to kick himself for the question. It’s not as if he wants Stark back in the room with himself and a sleepily pliant and very naked Charles. It’s not as if he even likes Stark. He doesn’t like people. He doesn’t have friends.
He’s not thinking about the job offer either. That’s a question about the future, again. And he can’t. Not while Sebastian Shaw’s draped over that future like a vicious shroud.
“No, go on, I’ll be down in the garage. You take care of him.” Not only about this morning; no need to be a telepath to pick up that undercurrent.
Erik says, calmly, “Always,” and goes back down the hall, to bring Charles breakfast and watch blue eyes blink, awakening, into a smile.
Alone in the hallway, feet making no sound on the luxurious golden wood floor and plush scattered area rugs, he can’t help thinking once more about nice men. About what Charles would’ve wanted, had wanted, from life, before the CIA’d ever requested his aid, before Charles himself had plunged into a freezing black ocean and pulled Erik up to the surface and demanded that they both know they’d never be alone. Before Charles had, without hesitation, joined their lives together.
He pushes open the door. His metal purrs back at him with satisfied vigilance; Charles is genuinely asleep, and doesn’t react. Fingerprint bruises wink up from one visible hipbone, half-obscured by a drift of sheet. And Erik stands there in the doorway, simply looking, while his heart aches strangely behind its cage of bone.
He’s never had much patience for anything simple and clean and nice, for anything less than strong. For anyone refusing to embrace their full potential. For any person foolish enough to hope that the world isn’t broken, that humanity isn’t flawed. To believe otherwise is naïve and dangerous; people are useful when they have uses, and some men need to die, and trust is a luxury belonging to those who’ve never been wounded.
But Charles has been wounded. And Charles trusts him, even in the face of all of Erik’s anger and power and pain.
And the world’s more complicated than he wants to believe, as Charles would no doubt remind him. Sebastian Shaw is a mutant. One of them. And Erik’s own parents hadn’t been.
Charles’s family hadn’t been mutants either. Erik would equally hesitate, except in the strictest sense, to call them human.
Charles stirs, waking, or near to, layers of beautiful complications like multifaceted iron roses; no, he thinks, changing the comparison. Like roses, yes, but living ones, wrapped around an iron trellis, vibrant and vital and blooming and green. To mistake vitality for weakness, however, would be an error. Those vines are coiled and powerful and thorned with old pain and raw telepathic strength.
He’s fortunate, he thinks very quietly, that they’ve become entwined with him. With his heart.
And he’s willing to be Charles’s latticework forever. Charles is, after all, holding him too.
Lovely, Charles says, yawning. Erik. You’re beautiful. And so’re your metaphors.
Erik, uncomfortable with this, announces, “I’ve brought you an omelette.”
Charles blinks, not physically. Thank you.
“Don’t thank me yet. You’ll need to sit up to eat.” You can sit up, correct?
“Hmm…” Oh, probably, yes…
“That bad?” I’m…sorry I hurt you? That’s a multilayered thought: regret for pushing so hard, regret that it’d been necessary, lack of regret that he had done it, relief that he’d done enough, brought Charles back to laugh and tease him and push him in return.
You didn’t hurt me, Charles murmurs in reply, and phantom kisses ruffle across his mind, and then the physical version follows, lips firm and decided against his. “See? I can sit up perfectly well.”
Erik does not point out the softness of the bed, or the tell-tale soreness of thoroughly-stretched muscles that aren’t his. This is Charles being honest with him, hiding nothing, letting him feel precisely how bad or not bad it is.
No secrets. He rather likes that. For a change.
Charles has looped still-bound arms around his neck, and is kissing his ear, which turns into nibbling his ear, plus a hand tugging up his turtleneck. Erik doesn’t object to the physical display-Charles naked and affectionate is one of the best things he’s ever known in his life-but he does say Wait, when the hands wander lower and nearly make him drop the plate.
Hmm?
“I just…stop that…no, seriously, Charles, please. An order, if you’d like.” I mean I love you. He stops to look into blue eyes, dark as a summer twilight, looking back at his. The bandage on that arm, the bandage that’s just brushed against his back, is very white and clean. His heart does that foolish little twirl again at the sight.
“I love you,” Charles offers out loud, but there’s a retreat in his thoughts, the tropical-ocean waves coiling up tight and not breaking freely onto the sand.
“Don’t,” Erik tells him, and-probably too clumsily for Charles’s articulate power-lets him hear those thoughts as well: no secrets, no holding back, desire. Charles flushes; looks away, despite the nod that says he’s heard. More, then. Charles not meeting his gaze is unacceptable.
He says, “I want you. I also want you to eat. You’ve lost weight.” You’re beautiful. But I’m-concerned. You can hear me; hear that, then.
And Charles does, with a quicksilver dance across his mind, a startled comprehension, a smile. And then looks up with a real if small grin. Thank you. Then. “I do seem to be thanking you rather a lot. But you’ve been marvelous, Erik. Sir.”
“I enjoy you thanking me,” Erik says dryly, which earns the expected huff of amusement, but he adds I also enjoy being marvelous for you and means it, which gets another smile, and a wiggle of hands in their metal bondage.
“Do you want me to eat with this on, then? I’m not sure that’ll go well, but I can try.”
“Actually…” He’s had an idea. Just now. Looking at that smile, those bound wrists. Thinking about what Charles needs. Sends an image, neatly defined.
“You…what?”
“You heard me.” He forms the pictures, vividly displayed, as he speaks. Charles with hands behind his back. Naked. Waiting. Erik’s fingers in his mouth, feeding him by hand, bite by bite when Erik decides to give them.
Oh god. The eyes’re enormous, black and blue as nighttime seas, now. Erik, you-you want to-you want me to-I’ve never-
You did say not in public. And I understand. But here, and now…you’re mine, Charles. And you need this.
Charles actually gasps, as if the words have a physical impact. Yes, sir.
“Here, then. On your knees.” On the bed. He won’t make Charles get on the floor. At least not at the moment.
Oh- A smile, those expressive lips quirking upward. “Yes, all right.” Like this? Sitting back, legs folded up, hands neatly folded too, in his lap; “Yes,” Erik tells him, voice unaccountably hoarse. Like that.
He feeds Charles carefully, methodically, a bite at a time; Charles obediently opens his mouth for tidbits when Erik brings them to his lips, and chews, and swallows. After the fifth bite, he pauses, runs his thumb over those lips, and thinks Good, and Charles sighs.
Those seaglass-blue eyes’ve gone darker, drifting, a touch unfocused. Erik smiles.
Love?
Mmm…
You’re doing so well. Another bite, smaller this time; he runs a hand over Charles’s hip, proprietary, tracing spirals of freckles, and feels the shiver. “Drink?”
Charles raises eyebrows when Erik holds the glass for him, but doesn’t protest; doesn’t protest even less when Erik sets a hand in his hair and tugs his head back and makes him swallow more. The merriment’s absolutely bright, though, warring with the arousal in their thoughts. Erik?
He lets go, lets Charles sit up and look at him with perfect laughing submission in those eyes. “Did you have a question?” Are you-
I’m fine! “I was only wondering if you tried this before feeding it to me. Tony seems to believe mimosas are ninety percent champagne and ten percent juice. You may need to offer me more actual protein.”
“Oh.” He doesn’t want to admit that he hadn’t-some sort of vague sense of failure there-but he takes a sip now. And narrowly avoids spraying almost undiluted very potent champagne over both of them as a result. And then says some extremely impolite words about Tony Stark in German.
“Yes, he probably is that, at least that last one. Don’t take it away, I didn’t say I minded. I just wasn’t prepared. May I have more?”
Erik says, “Hmm,” and actually hands over the glass, this time, because he’s a bit worried about inadvertently making Charles choke on bubbly alcohol. Charles manages the sip adroitly despite bound hands, and settles them back in his lap, eyes dancing.
“He did say you’d approve. Should I be concerned?”
“I promise to remain relatively sober while you fuck me, sir,” Charles says, completely straight-faced, and this time it’s only Erik’s reflexes that rescue the food.
Sorry! “Here, I can help with that.”
No, you’re not. “And no, you can’t. You can sit there and think about what you’ve just said.” He finds space for everything on a helpful bedside table, and then feeds Charles a slice of tomato by hand, just because. Charles nibbles gently at his fingers; Erik permits this for a second, then takes the hand away and feeds him a bit more, pieces of bacon and toast and fruit. Charles closes his eyes briefly, the playfulness fading into honest acceptance; Erik touches his throat while he swallows, feeling the vulnerable movement beneath fingertips, knowing that Charles can feel it too.
He rations his own champagne consumption, but lets Charles drink most of the pitcher, in part because the tiny amount of orange juice that’s in there will be good for him, in part because despite Stark’s heavyhanded pouring there’s probably not enough alcohol to get Charles truly drunk, and in part because he’s kind of curious, given that comment and the promise in blue eyes, to see how this might progress. The answer seems to be rather well; Charles ends up wide-eyed and a little breathless, electric shivers running like spark-currents between them every time Erik’s fingers bring food to his mouth, lift the glass for him to drink, tilt his chin a fraction higher.
The morning’s very quiet, all gold and white and anticipatory. Charles is naked and gazing at him with enormous eyes and parted lips, kneeling at Erik’s command in the center of the bed, and the whole world quivers with want, drawn taut as a bowstring.
He runs a hand over Charles’s cheek. Charles closes his eyes, and tilts his head into the caress. He’s completely relaxed at Erik’s touch, a kind of expectant serenity, and just slightly tipsy, judging from the looseness of his motions, the openness of his mind; they could stay this way all day, Erik thinks, could balance on this moment forever.
He says, purposefully gentle but unshakeable, “I’m not going to fuck you, Charles, even if you want me to. I know you’re tired, and you’re sore. But I will take care of you. Understand?”
This earns a soft exhale against his hand. The answer’s not quite in words, though it is a reply: a silk-fold tangle of wistfulness and want and unfulfilled need and curiosity and faith in Erik, belief that Erik will indeed take care of him, as promised.
“All right, then.” I love you, Charles. Loud enough to be heard through all the surrender. Throughout the sunshine-and-salt-spray universe.
He brings Charles down onto the bed, that head settling on his shoulder, and Erik folds his arm around so that his fingers rest over a temple, at the corner of an eye. Charles closes both eyes, trustingly; breathes out and shifts against him, arousal pressing into Erik’s hip; not asking, merely instinctive craving, seeking his Dominant’s touch.
Charles does know the terms, he realizes all over again. Has read about them. Wants to use them. That hadn’t been exactly his thought; he doesn’t think in those terms, though he suspects he may from now on.
Charles moves against him again, restive. “Shh,” Erik tells him, and breathes a kiss to the arch of one eyebrow. “I did promise. I’ll take care of you.”
He takes the flushed thick length of Charles’s erection in hand, slow unhurried strokes. Charles is already close, awash in ecstasy and champagne-bubble bliss and the thrill of finally being touched right there; Erik sends over an thought, a command, and one hand drifts across to find Erik’s cock in return. Charles is too out of it for any proper rhythm, so it’s more like random caresses, but that’s all right; he feels himself tighten and tense at that thought too, the fact that he can do this to and for the man he loves. He’s the one who can push Charles this far. Can hold him through it.
Charles whimpers indistinctly when Erik’s hand pauses; not an objection, they’re beyond that, but dismay at the loss of sensation. Erik stops to kiss him again, thinking very clearly we’re all right, we’re good, you’re so good for me, be patient, and the disquiet ebbs at the certainty.
He puts Charles on his back, not held down by anything except wordless words. Sits up, flings his clothing across the room, grabs the lube, slides back between spread pale thighs and their galaxy of cinnamon stars. Runs a hand over Charles’s cock, rough enough to assert command but not enough to hurt. Charles sighs and pushes up into the caress, a response and not a request. He’ll take what Erik gives him; they both know that.
He wants very badly to be inside Charles again, to feel the exquisite slick drag of tight muscles around him, along every inch. But he knows precisely how well-used those muscles were, last night. Knows how exhausted Charles feels, and also how easy it’d be to take him like this, so far under that he’d accept it all, whatever Erik wants to do with him, for him, to him. Charles is broadcasting worn-out little hums of pleasure and soreness like shivering rainbows, bright and weary and likely unintentional; at the point where self-discipline slips and blurs into Erik’s discipline, the lightwaves escape, radiant and suffused with unbearable bliss, ribboning around the room.
They tug at his bones. Like coming home.
Amused, he thinks that perhaps Charles was right, that very first time: the invitation, though inadvertent, is still an initiation. Charles in fact isn’t good at patiently submitting.
Charles flinches. And the room feels darker, even though it’s not. Not words, precisely, but the emotion comes across in the dwindling of rainbows.
“No,” Erik says, and then amends that, instantly. “Don’t hold back. I was only thinking that you’re beautiful, Charles.” I like this. I like you, like this. Brilliant.
Charles is, evidently, self-aware enough to lift an eyebrow at him, albeit only a mental one.
“I mean it.” With a hand back on Charles’s ready cock for good measure, pull and twist and stroke over the dripping tip the way Charles likes it; and he hears the gasp and feels the shudder of response. Successful tactics, then. Excellent.
Tactics, indeed.
I thought you weren’t talking. He pushes those well-muscled runner’s legs apart; they fall open easily for him. “I don’t recall saying you could.”
Charles’s eyes get impossibly wide, oceans caught in saucers, at that. Yes, sir.
You always can if you need to. “Good.” He spills lube over his hand, strokes it along himself, watches Charles watching him. His own hand on his cock is good, but somehow it’s better with that shining gaze, those little eager inhales, urging him on.
So he makes a show of it. Slow and drawn-out, slicking himself up, letting the head push slowly through cupped fingers, hand sliding obscene and wet up and down the shaft. Charles actually sobs in frustration and tries to move his hands, apparently forgetting that Erik’s got them firmly anchored to the headboard. Paper-clips are such wonderful inventions, he thinks, and grins, too widely, displaying teeth.
“Please,” Charles gasps, voice cracking, please- and Erik shakes his head and answers “Not very obedient of you, love,” and Charles makes another sound like a sob and his cock jumps and leaves wetness smeared across his stomach, filthy decoration over fair skin and exotic sparkles.
Erik grins again, keeps those hands firmly secured even as they open and close imploringly, and then kneels between Charles’s thighs, slickness spread over them as well; the touch of his fingers, so close and yet not straying, elicits another moan.
He toys with Charles’s balls, the drawn-up tense weight of them; trails a wet finger lower, exploring the most private spaces of Charles’s body, skimming over the tight pink bud of muscle but not entering inside, even as Charles pants and swears and grows incoherent with need.
“I told you,” he breathes, lifting one leg to rest over his shoulder, speaking to the line of that knee, the hollow at the joint, the scent of Charles and sex and gold-painted mornings and cotton sheets, “I’m not planning to fuck you today,” and Charles whimpers at the denial, not comprehending, eyes bright with desperate tears that aren’t quite falling.
“Say it,” he says, making it a command, “tell me yes.”
And Charles whispers Yes, sir, and shivers everywhere and shuts his eyes as the tears fall and then goes quiet, all resistance gone, control completely given over and replaced with Erik’s, anything Erik wants to tell him, yes or no or wait or I want to hear you scream, wholly submerged in it.
This is tricky, he knows: this is the place where he could hurt Charles the most, with one unconsidered act, one ill-timed command. Charles would say yes to anything, has given him everything, and that courage astounds him even as it humbles him with the responsibility.
He does want to take care of Charles. Every atom of his body shouts it from inside: mine, mine to protect, I love this man.
So he coaxes the other leg up too, fitting his cock between them, pushing Charles’s thighs together; Charles moans faintly at the new sensation. “Watch,” Erik demands of him. Watch.
And he pushes between Charles’s thighs, feeling the slide of skin along skin, the delicious sensation of it. He’s long enough that, when he pushes forward, his cock rubs against Charles’s straining erection, and the sight’s intoxicating, himself and Charles pressed together as his weight bears down, as he nudges legs further back and closer together for more friction, and when he checks the blue eyes have listened and are gazing at the spectacle, enormous and mesmerized.
“You like this?” He does it again, and Charles shudders beneath him. You like watching my cock, Charles, you want to watch me come like this, on you, all over you-
Charles gasps, and his entire body jerks, and Erik wonders for a second if he’s going to come like that, on the spot; but there’s a sensation like grasping at handholds, and a flicker of sense-memory that isn’t his but is of his voice, not until I say you can, and Charles clinging to it with a vise-grip.
Perfect, Erik tells him, and fucks him harder, rougher, hips slamming together, the wet sounds of skin on skin, lube and slickness and the grip of those thighs, the heat of the blood in Charles’s aching erection, swollen and heavy with the lack of relief, and it’s that thought that sends him over the edge, that and the tiny broken cry Charles makes when Erik’s hands bite down hard on his legs; and the orgasm’s like the splintering of the world into rainbows, pulses of color, jets of white stickiness spurting out over Charles’s stomach, Charles’s cock, Charles’s naked body.
That body is shaking beneath him, making small helpless sounds. Erik flings a tendril of uncoordinated power at the wrist cuffs, pulls those bound hands up and makes them complicit in the position, using Charles’s hands to hold Charles’s legs in place; bends down and whispers, “Now,” and echoes now just in case, and Charles stops breathing and comes apart and comes on command, the peak flooding over them both like a rolling wave, vast and depthless and almost painful in its long-pent-up release.
The waves roll and thunder and pull him in, and Erik can barely breathe, some part of him caught up in it and dragged helplessly into one final trembling crash, another piece of him watching in awe as Charles’s cock tightens and jerks and splashes white across his own body, mingling with Erik’s climax, covering him with it. Some last fraction of self-control tells him that he can’t collapse in ecstasy yet, that he has to inhale and exhale and take care of Charles, and he does retain enough sanity to snap open the makeshift cuffs and let the paper-clips tumble to the mattress along with all of those freed limbs.
Charles, he gets out, panting. Charles, I love you, I love you, can you answer me, can you say something, please-
I love you. Surprisingly coherent, or it would be surprising if Erik could find any energy with which to be surprised. Instead he just rolls over onto his back and gathers Charles close and holds him, cradling that head to his shoulder, not caring that their bodies are becoming messily stuck together.
Are you-all right, was that-?
That was… Charles pauses, laughs, coruscating wonder like the sun. That was everything I’ve ever wanted, I think. Erik, I love you. So very much.
I love you, Charles. Sentences’re still an effort, but he’s managing well enough considering that Charles has just literally made him come so hard he’s seen rainbows. “We should…you…shower…” He taps a hand over Charles’s back, feeling the tangible warmth of him. Then kisses him, the top of that fluffy-haired and slightly sweat-damp head. Because he can. Because Charles is in his arms and is his and is safe and is laughing.
“Shower,” Charles agrees, “and then we should pack, and see about flights home, we should check on the children, and we’ve probably trespassed on Tony’s hospitality long enough…” Not yet, though. Can you hold me? Only for a moment.
Of course. I like holding you. Arms tightly around that shorter muscular frame, breathing in the scent of Charles’s hair, feeling the thump of their heartbeats, the blood in their veins, the cool joyful metal of the beachfront house, the world around them, drenched in California sun. Everything you’ve ever wanted, you said?
“Yes,” Charles says, and turns his head to press a kiss to Erik’s shoulder, lazy and affectionate and fulfilled. You and me together. This-means everything.
Erik holds him, and considers that statement. Considers that Charles, in the face of his own scars and personal battlefields, has been the one to make it. Contemplates the man called Shaw, and other scars. Commitment, and promises.
He finds Charles’s hand with his own. Summons the topmost eager paper-clip from the floor; it leaps up promptly at his call.
He loops it around that freckled finger like a kiss, and answers, “Yes.”