Cheers (NC-17)
“I can undress people with my mind,” Charles said, giggling. He looked at the bottom of his beer glass again. “How is this empty? This wasn’t empty.”
Erik grinned smugly at him. “You drank it."
“I don’t understand how you’re still compos mentis, and when I say compos I say it without the T, because compos mentis with the t is what I am, compost mentis, you would say, pissed,” Charles babbled, fingering his glass. Erik watched those deft fingers stroke the length of the glass and wondered, not for the first time, if Charles were doing it on purpose. Did he always do that when he got hammered? No wonder he had such difficulty picking up girls.
Charles looked questioningly at him and he realized that he should be talking.
“I’m German,” Erik said. “If I’m going to get as pissed as you it looks like I’ll have to start drinking straight scotch.”
“I can undress people with my mind,” Charles said again.
“You already shared that delightful fact with me,” Erik told him.
“Isn’t it delightful?” Charles said. “I thought so too. I thought, isn’t this interesting? I must tell Erik. Erik likes to hear interesting things. He is an interesting man who likes interesting things. Erik is like me. I am speaking of you in the third person because I am, as previously stated, pissed.”
“Ah,” Erik said. “You don’t say.”
“Where did this beer go?” Charles said, staring into the glass again.
If anyone had told him a year ago that he would be sitting here while Charles Xavier after only five beers became all hands and exaggerated expressions of delight or horror or enthusiasm and wide laughing blue eyes, and instead of wanting to punch him in the jaw he would actually find it - curiously endearing, he would probably have cuffed the man. Erik wondered what fool had told Charles he was capable of holding his liquor. He almost wanted to thank him. Erik had never in his life had drinks with someone who behaved more like a puppy when inebriated. In fact, he had seen actual puppies who behaved with greater dignity and self-restraint. Charles seemed actually about ready to curl up in your lap and wag his tail.
“I think this beer is defective,” Charles was saying, getting a little flushed and indignant. “It keeps disappearing.” His eyes widened with an idea. He leaned closer to Erik and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Maybe there is another mutant in this bar. Maybe his power is to make beer vanish. That would be a wonderful power.”
“We could add him to the team and have him evaporate Shaw’s bar,” Erik said dryly.
“You think of everything,” Charles said, patting him on the cheek. “I don’t know what I did without you.” He suddenly sat bolt upright and looked down. “Who moved the floor? Why is the floor moving? Is this whole bar full of mutants? I want to go find them and congratulate them.”
“The floor’s still here,” Erik said, glancing down. “Do you want to get up?”
“I want to meet the mutant who makes the beer disappear,” Charles said. “Beer. Disappear. I bet he’s here.” Suddenly his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Rhyming can be a powerful mnemonic! I find it helps tremendously when one is, as they say, drunk. All my pick-up lines rhyme.”
“When you’re not undressing people with your mind,” Erik added.
“How did you know that?” Charles asked, looking suspiciously at him. “Who told you I can do that?”
“You just did.”
“Oh I did, didn’t I?” Charles said, grinning unabashedly. “I must be drunk.”
“As a boiled owl.”
“WHO IS BOILING THE OWLS?” Charles bellowed. “I want to set that man’s mind straight.”
“Charles, perhaps you’d better get some air.”
Charles looked beseechingly at him, those blue eyes widening piteously as though Erik had decreed an end to cake. “But I want to stay here with you,” Charles said.
“All right then, stay here,” Erik said.
“Don’t need air when I’ve got Erik,” Charles said. He giggled. Erik would have made Charles’ cuff-links turn on him at the pun, but when he giggled like that and cocked his head to one side as though there were three Eriks sitting in front of him and he were trying to make up his mind which one he liked best, Erik couldn’t do anything but sigh tolerantly and grin back.
The bartender came around again and Charles yelled, “Give this admirable man three scotches!” in great excitement, nearly tumbling from his stool, so that Erik had to reach out a hand to keep him from falling.
“And get him a cola,” Erik hissed.
“Don’t want a cola,” Charles grunted. “Colas for girls. ‘M not a girl. My name’s Xavier. Charles Xavier.”
“Wonderful memory training you must have at Oxford,” Erik murmured.
“Aw Erik you’re so boringly sober,” Charles whispered. “So buttoned up. Or is it down. Buttoned. Someone ought to unbutton you. I’ve been trying but it seems I have not succeeded. You are still definitely and definitively buttoned.”
“Maybe I’m zipped,” Erik returned, grinning. Charles seemed to think this was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He hit Erik repeatedly on the knee.
The cola arrived, nestled between three scotches. Erik drank off one of them in a single gulp, possessed by the vague hope that it might make Charles make more sense.
“Do you ever try pickup lines?” Charles asked. “Or do the fillies just fall in your lap like chestnuts or those other things that fall in your lap if you’re tall and handsome and can manage to look absurdly sexy in a turtleneck, which for most people would be an absolutely insuperable handicap, but in your case apparently isn’t, which is a testimony to you, tchin tchin.” Charles lifted his glass in a slightly wobbly salute and took another gulp. “Beer’s funny. Tastes like cola.”
“I like turtlenecks,” Erik said, feeling something go a little silly in the bottom of his stomach and thinking, perhaps I’d better not have drunk that scotch so fast, or perhaps I need another one.
“How many languages do you speak?” Charles asked. “You seem to speak an awful lot.”
“An awful lot,” Erik said.
“Good, that’s what I thought,” Charles said, giggling. Kiss me.
“I beg your pardon?” Erik said.
Suddenly Charles’ eyes were dark with panic and confusion. “Did I just say something odd?” he said.
“No,” Erik muttered, feeling his mouth go dry. “I think maybe you didn’t say anything at all.”
“Oh that’s much better,” Charles said. “Can’t say anything silly if you don’t say anything, that’s what my stepfather always used to say. Poor man. Hideous mind. Some people can’t help being hideous, you know.”
“Can’t they?”
“But most of us can,” Charles went on. “You can. You already are. Not hideous. Obviously.” Kiss me. I want you. I think maybe I’ve never wanted anything else in my life.
Erik felt his stomach slowly turn over. Charles was grinning innocently at him, and that soft brown hair was framing his face so it seemed as though it were lit from the inside, like a house that you saw from the road in the middle of a cold night on a lonely walk. A house where the inhabitants were kind and played chess and looked at you with hopeful blue eyes, and maybe you could stay the night. “Where’d the beer go? What’s this cola? Don’t want a cola.”
“You’d better drink the cola."
“Had I?” Charles said, looking dubiously at it. “Well, if you say so.” He drained it, spilling a little on his chin, and when it became clear that he hadn’t noticed Erik muttered, “Let me,” and reached over and wiped it with his thumb, and the look Charles shot him then made him reach quickly for the next scotch, because maybe that would make Charles make more sense, or maybe it wouldn’t but it might give him an excuse.
“To answer your question I never use pick-up lines,” Erik said.
“Does everyone just fall into your bed then?” Charles asked. “Do you walk in in the afternoon and find them lying there with legs spread wanting you to fuck them senseless?”
Erik swallowed uncomfortably, feeling a tightness in his pants. Charles couldn’t be doing this on purpose, he told himself. Couldn’t.
“And do you?” Charles asked, leaning nearer.
“Do I what?”
“Fuck them senseless?” Erik thought he was actually trying to bat his eyelashes. The thought nearly choked him.
He picked up the third scotch and took a nervous sip.
Charles jostled his elbow, making the scotch run down his face. “Erik,” he said.
“What?”
“Erik, I think you have a drinking problem,” Charles said, and when Erik put down the glass and looked at him perplexedly Charles said, “And you’ve got a little-” and reached over and wiped the scotch off Erik’s chin with two fingers and then in a gesture that was so over-dramatically lewd that it made Erik’s trousers ache, slipped the fingers in his mouth and sucked on them, glancing at Erik through his lashes.
“Charles I think you’ve had enough,” Erik said.
“I’m drinking cola,” Charles said. “’S you I’m worried about.”
“I can handle it,” Erik said, wondering why his head felt so light, and watching Charles thoughtfully lick the pad of his index finger, and thinking “It must be that second scotch.”
“You can, I think,” Charles said. “You’re the best of them.” He grinned stupidly and swayed on his stool, and Erik reached out a hand to steady him, and Charles turned an absolutely melting grin on him, those blue eyes shining. I bet you have a big cock. Charles’ tongue ran over those absurdly red lips. You walk like you do.
Erik swallowed. He was trying not to drink all of this scotch at once but what Charles was doing was making it almost impossible.
“Charles I don’t think you quite realize how much you’ve had to drink,” he said, trying to think of the least sensual thing possible to calm the almost painful pressure in his trousers. Hank’s feet. Hank’s feet. Hank’s feet. “I think you are going to feel terrible tomorrow,” he said. “I think we’d better get you home.”
“Oh good I was hoping you would say that,” Charles said. Don’t bother kissing me. Just fuck me. Simpler. More efficient.
“Charles, you’re very drunk,” Erik said again, irritated that his voice was rough like that.
“Erik you’re very magnetic,” Charles said. “But tomorrow I will be sober and you will still be magnetic.” He hiccupped. Erik burst out laughing in spite of himself and suddenly thought, No I’d still very much like to kiss you.
And then Charles grinned and teetered off the stool and half into his lap, smiling that absurd little smile.
“I’m Winston Churchill,” he mumbled, catching hold of Erik’s jacket.
“Shut up,” Erik said, and even though Charles smelled like beer and cola he had never wanted to kiss anyone more in his life. “Let’s get you home,” he said.
Then he climbed carefully off the stool with Charles still leaning on him, and they swayed together and Charles began laughing again, not letting go of his jacket, so it was like a dance as they teetered towards the door of the bar. When they made it out the door Charles kept pulling him and giggling and he knew Charles was drunk, knew they were both drunk, but Charles’ body against his was so warm and pliable and perfect that he took two more strides and shoved him against a wall and muttered, “No more talking,” and kissed him hungrily, forcefully, tasting the beer and the cola and something richer and more delicate that had to be just Charles, and Charles’ arms wreathed around his neck and the thought, Good filled his mind and then Charles’ hand reached questingly into his pants and Charles thought And you do! How nice! and the slender fingers began stroking him with an amazing precision and he muttered, “Charles, that’s enough” and clasped his fingers around Charles’ wrist.
The bright watery blue of Charles’ eyes clouded over a little with disappointment and Charles actually pouted and Erik said, “You’re completely unbelievable,” and Charles’ hand was in his pants again, and he said, warningly, “Charles-” and Charles muttered, “’s not my fault you’re so sexy when I’m drunk” and then Charles looked a little puzzled and said, “Although those variables may be independent,” and Erik had to kiss him again.
And he decided to let Charles’ hand keep doing that because if he didn’t, it was going to be impossible to walk home, and he was so close, so horribly wonderfully close, and then Charles pulled back a little and narrowed his eyes and thought This and suddenly an image of Charles on his knees, totally naked, mouth wrapped around Erik’s cock while Erik's fingers clenched in his hair, flooded into his mind, and he gave a little startled gasp and came.
Then he absolutely had to kiss Charles again, and he didn’t think he could ever get tired of kissing him and if he could stand Charles when Charles was so absurdly drunk and think he was - adorable, and wonderful, and - everything, then, well, maybe this was-
“Shhh,” Charles said, pulling his hand out of Erik’s pants and thoughtfully sucking on his fingers, and Erik felt his spent cock twitch.
“Charles you’re absolutely inconceivable,” Erik whispered.
“Shhh,” Charles said again, placing a finger on his lips. “You’re drunk, Erik.”
“You too,” Erik hissed. But I’ll still love you when I’m sober. He wasn’t fully sure whose thought it was.
Charles grinned, and then Erik had to kiss him one more time before they stepped away from the wall and began walking unsteadily back towards the hotel.
There was a silence.
“Did you know I can undress people with my mind?” Charles asked, nearly toppling into him.
Erik tried to keep his mind from fluttering back to that tantalizing image and instead hooked an arm around Charles’ waist and caught Charles’ hand in his other hand and interlaced their fingers. Charles leaned contentedly into the touch and practically purred and Erik consoled himself with the thought that if anyone noticed them walking like this it would be very obvious how absolutely drunk they both were, and besides even drunk like this on scotch and Charles he could make the streetlamps and manhole covers and hubcaps turn on anyone who so much as narrowed his eyes.
“I can, you know,” Charles whispered. Then Charles looked sheepishly at him, as though somewhere he guessed that he had already said that four times, and Erik had to kiss him again.
“You don’t say.”