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It seems so patently unfair. It isn't as though Charles can't tell what a magnificent body Erik has; the first time he met Erik, Erik was in a wet suit, for God's sake. And his turtlenecks manage to simultaneously leave everything and nothing to the imagination: they cover so much, but cling so tightly.
How a man like Erik, who thinks of his body as a tool more than anything else, who barely notices that he wakes up hard in the morning and practically sleeps through his quick jerkoff sessions in the shower (Charles doesn't try to listen in, but he's only human), who doesn't even notice when people are flirting with him (and on this road trip of theirs Charles has seen plenty of that, and would have seen more if he didn't step in to send people on their way with-- well. It's not unethical to nudge them, he's decided, as Erik would only have said no anyway, and this saves them the pain of rejection): how Erik can be so bloody modest when it seems like he barely notices the reasons for modesty, Charles can't fathom, but it is driving him insane.
Turtlenecks, suits, long-sleeved shirts; the man's entire body is a tease.
*
Then again, for Erik, that makes sense.
For all the tightly-coiled, deep emotions running through him, Erik doesn't like to expose much about himself. Charles has seen into his mind, watched through his eyes as he tracked Shaw those last few steps: Geneva to Argentina, Argentina to Florida. His memories are a swirl of feelings: satisfaction, disgust, hatred, pain, anger, and perhaps, deep down, a stirring of arousal-- but in the moment, in the memory, so little of it showed through. He didn't have to show those men anger in order to leave them intimidated or dead. Erik has a phenomenal poker face, even in the eyes of someone like Charles.
When people do get close enough to flirt, when Charles hasn't swept them away quickly enough, Charles can't get a read on Erik at all. It would be unethical to dig into Erik's thoughts when Erik has told him in no uncertain terms to stay out of his mind, and nothing tends to float to the surface where Charles can simply pick it up out of mid-air, so Charles is forced to resort to body language. And there's precious little of that to go on: no head inclines, no involuntary lip motions, no eyebrow gestures, he never turns his body toward or away from the people who are talking to him.
If Erik's body is a tease, his mind is even worse. Charles wants to understand him, wants that more than he can recall wanting anything else in his life, but Erik won't let him in.
*
Erik doesn't drink (much-- a glass of beer now and then, which has no effect on him that Charles can tell, mentally or physically), which has more or less turned Charles into more of a lush than he already was.
He drinks to be social, to make connections with the mutants they're meeting on this whirlwind tour of the States; he drinks to pass the time, to keep himself out of that motel room where there's no one but himself and Erik, nothing but endless rounds of chess that feel like foreplay but never lead anywhere.
He drinks, sometimes, because it makes his grip on his powers fall slack. He can hear thoughts, but muffled, as if coming from the other side of a loud party. And he can't be tempted, even a little, to do something invasive and absurd like having Erik unbutton his cuffs, roll his sleeves up to his elbows. (God, Erik's forearms. Charles has seen Erik in shirts so tight that Charles can map out Erik's veins, and he's watched Erik carrying heavy briefcases and even heavier suitcases; he's seen the stretch and strain in Erik's muscles. What he wouldn't give to see them with his own eyes.)
Now and then, Charles-- being anything but a monk-- does disappear with someone, particularly on nights when he's not sure he can stand to be cooped up in the same room with Erik all night, wanting to look but unable, wanting to read Erik's mind but having already promised to do nothing of the sort. He tries to be back before dawn, but usually Erik's up and showered and shaved and dressed by then, ready to start the day, and Charles pays for his infidelity (it can't really be infidelity if nothing's going on between them, but somehow it's what Charles thinks of sleeping with other people, especially other men, especially tall men with narrow hips and square jaws, and can Erik really have missed the fact that Charles is easy for any man who even remotely resembles him, can that have failed to attract his attention?) with a thirty-six-hour or forty-eight-hour day.
This one-- oh, hell, his name is... Carl or Connor or Cole or Chris, Charles doesn't remember-- he looks like Erik might if Erik could bend a little, relax somewhat. If he slouched, or gave out seductive, lazy smiles over shared cigarettes and glasses of cheap scotch. His hair's longer than Erik's, all soft and artfully tousled (or not so artfully, maybe he did just get out of bed), and he's got stubble, not just five o'clock, more like yesterday's five o'clock and all of today's.
"Do you need to let your friend know you're going?"
"I suppose it would be polite," Charles admits. He slides off his bar stool and heads to Erik-- at this stage of drink, trying to transmit a thought even so simple as «I'm off, I'll be fine, I'll see you at the motel later on» would probably leave half the bar looking around trying to figure out who said that.
Erik looks from Charles to just behind him, and Charles blinks back at his partner for the evening; most of them just leave Charles to this part, don't bother getting close enough to Erik to even make eye contact.
This one does. He holds his hand out until Erik lifts an eyebrow and takes it, and he says, "I'm Connor. Nice to meet you."
"I'm sure," Erik says. Charles is not surprised when Erik doesn't offer his name in return.
"So. We'll be off," Charles says, nodding back at Connor. "I'll be back by--"
"He'll be back when he's had enough," Connor says, "so it could be a while."
Connor drapes a hand over Charles's shoulder, squeezing, and for a split-second Erik's poker face slips. His eyes fix on Connor's hand, on the way his fingers are gripping Charles's shoulder, and there's heat in his expression, the tiniest hint of his jaw tightening.
Charles reaches up to his temple immediately, forces himself through his own mind-haze. «What?» is all he can get out, and he strains to hear anything from Erik, anything at all, please, Erik, tell me...
But Erik simply lifts his glass to the two of them and nods, all signs of-- whatever it was, irritation or frustration or anger or jealousy-- gone now. "I can only imagine," Erik says. "Enjoy."
«Enjoy, that's all you have to say to me--»
He's not sure if the thought gets through, because Connor is tugging him along, and Charles twists, gets his eyes off Erik, goes.
*
Connor is all hands, all teeth. The minute they get into his apartment, he's pulling at Charles's clothes, yanking his shirt out of his pants, tugging and pulling and popping one of the buttons off Charles's shirt.
It's a little fast, but Charles goes with it, letting Connor drag him over to the couch. Connor gets his shirt open completely, pushes up Charles's undershirt so his belly's exposed-- or, no, it's not his stomach Connor's after, it's his belt, right for the belt, fine, yes, all right. Charles manages to kick off his shoes as Connor unbuckles his belt, and then so much for foreplay; Connor drags his pants and boxers off all at once.
There ought to be-- lubricant or something, lotion at least, but no, Connor just unbuckles his own belt and pushes his jeans out of the way far enough to get his cock out. Charles's eyes go a little wide-- Connor's very well-hung and Charles has not been getting the kind of practice he'd like, lately-- but this is happening, this is definitely going to happen, and all it takes is a slight tilt of his head and the tiniest bit of a squint, and he can pretend it's Erik, pretend Erik's so overcome with want for him that he can't even wait long enough to be gentle. Maybe Erik is never gentle.
Connor spits into his hand and slicks his cock up with that-- better than nothing, but not by much-- and then he's moving forward, pressing Charles's legs to his chest as he drives in deep. Charles cries out, covers his mouth with one hand and takes hold of his hair and pulls with the other, breathe through the pain, get through this and it'll be good, come on, Xavier, you wanted this to happen, you wanted this. For all he's talking himself out of flinching away, maybe it wouldn't even matter. Connor wants him; Connor's having him. Charles tilts his head back on the arm of the couch, and Connor groans, leaning forward, bending down, licking a hot stripe up the center of Charles's throat.
"You think I'm stupid," Connor growls, "but you're the one getting fucked, here."
Charles looks up, frowning; where the hell did that come from? He takes his hand off his mouth to ask. "What...?"
Connor reaches up for him, gets a hand into Charles's hair. "Your friend," he growls, "does it feel like this when he fucks you?"
"We're not," Charles says, and Connor slams into him, driving thoughts of Erik as far out of Charles's mind as they ever get. "Fuck. Yes. Fuck me. Please."
"Does he make you beg?" Connor asks, but oh, he's not stopping now, not giving Charles a moment's respite. Good. Good. His cock is big enough, hard enough, that with no prep and no mercy, Charles won't be sitting comfortably for days. It's fantastic; Charles tries to scramble forward to catch Connor's shoulders in his hands, his arms, anything. "You want him to fuck you like this?"
Charles grits his teeth out of impatience. He doesn't want to do this, never likes doing this to people who are just being kind enough to give him what he wants, but he puts two fingers to his temple and pushes through his inebriation, he can do this much. He sends out a fast heated order to «stop talking».
Connor goes immediately, blissfully quiet-- the words are probably still alive and well in his head, but with this much alcohol in his system, Charles can ignore them, thank God. It's one thing to go home with someone who looks like Erik, to pretend Erik's the one on top of him, but he's damned if he needs to be taunted with the knowledge that it's not.
Give him credit for this much, Connor's good: he looks fantastic when he's fucking Charles, his face screwed up tightly with pleasure, his whole body arching forward to get more, take more. He sounds even better-- every one of his moans goes straight to Charles's cock, and it'd be tempting to let him use words again, except if he starts saying I'll fuck you if he won't, you'll let a stranger fuck you, you'll let me do anything you want just because I look like him or something equally hurtful, it'll wreck the mood completely. Better not to take the chance.
So Charles squirms and arches and lets Connor fuck him, and when Connor finally gets a hand between them and jerks Charles off, Charles gasps and loses himself to it. He does his best to let the pleasure blot out everything else as he comes, and Connor comes along with him. He tries, and mostly succeeds, in not wondering how much better this would be with Erik.
*
He dresses in silence. He can feel Connor's eyes on him as he picks up his clothes and dresses as best he can-- the shirt is a ruin-- but he's not really interested in hearing anything Connor has to say, so it's not until he's dressed and out the door that he releases the mental command. It's a risk, he could wind up with Connor yelling something after him, but he gets lucky for once; Connor doesn't say a thing.
He's sobering some as he takes a taxi back to the motel. The buzz of minds all around him is quiet, but more coherent. The cab driver's thinking about the end of his shift, only two more hours to go, and then he can go home to his wife and kids and get a few hours' rest before he's got to make the kids' lunches for school. His wife'll be at work by then, she's a schoolteacher herself. He misses getting to see more of her, but the money from the taxi job is pretty good.
Charles tips him fifty dollars as he gets out of the cab. "Maybe you can make it an early night," he offers. The cab driver stares at him in shock and pleasure, and nods, unable to even get out a thank you before Charles is out of the cab and heading up the exterior stairs, to the second-floor room he and Erik are staying in. Charles hears the thought anyway. At least he's made someone happy tonight.
He opens the door and steps in, and as he's walking in, Erik's walking out. Of the bathroom. Towel wrapped around his waist, rubbing his hair vigorously with a second towel, and there's nothing else, nothing but that one small towel covering his body.
There's a brutal irony to this: he went home with Connor because Connor reminded him of Erik, and he never so much as got to take Connor's shirt off. He left Erik behind at the bar because Erik is a monument to all the things Charles wants and can't have, and yet here he is, indecent, still a little damp.
If he'd been here, Charles reminds himself, Erik would have taken his clothes into the bathroom with him-- the silk pajamas he sleeps in, if he's planning to sleep. There's nothing he's missing out on; Erik was never on offer.
Erik looks up when Charles shuts the door behind him. "You're earlier than I expected," he says mildly. "It didn't go well?"
Charles sighs and stretches, tilting his head back and rubbing at the back of his neck. This is wearing him out, and right now his patience feels stretched to its limits. "I don't know why you give a damn," he says, "but it went fine."
A hint of emotion bleeds through, something more complicated than the anger Charles is so accustomed to encountering with Erik. Charles flashes back to the look Erik had on his face when Connor said it would be a while, when Connor had that possessive hand on Charles's shoulder. If he'd been sober then, he might have caught it, might be able to interpret this feeling now. He looks back at Erik, who's got the towel he was using on his hair wadded up in both hands.
"What?" Charles asks. «All that emotion and you won't tell me? What?»
And Charles finally understands the phrase be careful what you wish for, because Erik reaches out with one hand and grabs Charles by the back of the neck, his long, strong fingers digging in hard, his arm tensed all the way to the shoulder. Charles would stare, but Erik's advancing on him, his body getting nearer and nearer, his mind opening up and flooding Charles with a torrent of emotions and thoughts and images, and then he's up against Charles's chest, nothing between them but all these bloody stupid clothes of Charles's and a towel Charles could get rid of with one tug.
He can see it: the way Erik's gaze followed them out of the bar, the way Erik held the mental signature of Charles's watch until it was out of even that considerable reach (more considerable than Charles knew, they'll have to talk about that later, do some tests). Erik, finishing off that last beer, his mind replaying Connor's hand on Charles's shoulder, over and over. He'll be back when he's had enough... so it could be a while. Salt in a wound that Charles only now realizes has been open for some time, and he would never have, would never, if he'd known--
"You stink of him," Erik whispers. His mouth is so close to Charles's that Charles can feel his breath, fuck, and he's getting hard, can't help getting hard, not with Erik this close to him, all over him, practically naked after all this time hidden beneath clothes and mental shields. "I can smell him all over you, and if I rolled you over and put my mouth on your ass the way I've been dreaming about all this time, I'd be licking him out of you, wouldn't I?"
The image almost brings Charles to his knees, but he has to nod; he feels sure Erik is genuinely waiting for an answer to that question. "Yes," he whispers; even for that one syllable, his voice is shaking.
"Come on."
Erik grabs Charles by the wrist, and Charles doesn't resist or even hesitate. He follows Erik into the bathroom, watches as Erik wrenches both knobs with a quick, fierce gesture and gets the shower running. The water starts steaming almost right away, but then Charles knew Erik hadn't been out of the shower for very long.
"Get your clothes off," Erik says. Charles does pause at that-- Erik sounds so angry, still. The hesitation doesn't lessen the swell of that emotion. Erik's face twists into a sarcastic little grin. "What? You're not going to show me what he saw? You'll fuck someone who looks like me, but you won't fuck me?"
Charles unbuckles his belt, kicks his shoes off and drops pants and boxers to the floor. He glares up at Erik, and he shouldn't, shouldn't, but who the fuck does Erik think he's fooling, he thinks this stalemate of theirs was Charles's idea?
«He saw this,» Charles projects, and then he gives Erik the rest of it, the torn shirt and missing buttons, the pants barely wrestled off, socks still on, Connor driving into him still fully-clothed. He gives him all of it, Charles cutting off Connor's words when they hit too close to home, and Erik's jaw clenches and unclenches, his neck and shoulders are tight with tension, and he comes in close, tearing at Charles's shirt-- any buttons left after Connor are gone now. The undershirt goes, too, and then Erik's hands are on him, Erik's body against his again, and Erik kisses him, teeth cutting into Charles's lower lip, the kiss almost too brutal and angry to enjoy.
Almost, but not quite, because for all the anger, for all the hurt and rage between them, it's still Erik, Erik in his arms, Erik's mouth on his, finally, finally «God, finally.»
Erik pulls away first, but he looks shaken, almost broken. His eyes are wet, eyelashes damp with-- could Charles have possibly done that to him?-- tears, none of them falling yet, but nearly, nearly.
"Get," Erik chokes out, nodding at the shower, using his power to draw the curtain all the way back-- metal rings at the top, no wonder he can move it around so easily. "Get in."
Charles finishes undressing and steps into the shower, letting the hot water pour over him. He stretches out a hand to Erik. "Are you with me or not?"
Erik drops his towel-- hard, too, not that it's any surprise to Charles by now, and his cock is every bit as impressive as Connor's, or for that matter any of the other memorably big men Charles has been with-- and steps into the shower with him. The curtain goes sliding back into place, and Erik draws Charles into his arms, bends his head down and kisses him, kisses him hard enough to bring tears to Charles's eyes, but Charles still gets his arms around Erik and kisses back every bit as hard.
«Wanted this, wanted you, this whole time, it was always you, why didn't you tell me, I never would have hurt you--»
Erik's thoughts cascade into his, too, everything open now, no more secrets. «Tried, so many times, I tried, I wanted, never looked at anyone the way I look at you and you just kept--» and Erik breaks the kiss, spins Charles around so he's facing the spray, facing away from Erik, has to put his arms out in front of him or risk falling-- «fucking men who looked like me,» Erik thinks at him, mind contorted with rage and pain so deep Charles stifles a sob of his own.
«I didn't know, didn't know, you told me to stay out of your mind and I did, I didn't know--»
Erik's hand trails down Charles's back, a hint of something slippery, soap, and Charles doesn't have to read Erik's intention to know what he's doing with it. He tilts his hips back, inviting-- inviting even this, the anger. Erik needs it; hell, at this point Charles needs it. «It was only because I thought I couldn't have you,» Charles sends, and Erik's jolt of anger twists into something very much like triumph as he works two long, thick, soapy fingers into Charles's ass.
It stings-- no way around that, he's aching enough from before and this does little enough to help-- but he pushes back against Erik's hand, lets Erik take what he wants. «Do it,» Charles tells him, «do it, do it, I want you to, God how I've wanted you to, I don't want anyone else, didn't want him, wanted you--»
Erik comes forward, puts an arm around Charles's chest. Charles moans and tries to rock back against Erik's hand, tries to share all the things Erik's doing to him, how Erik's making him feel-- so good, the need high and tight in his body, Erik's fingers filling him perfectly, the fast merciless pace putting Charles at grave risk of coming all over again in spite of the pain. Erik reaches in deeper, like he's looking for-- oh, God, he is looking for that, and Charles links with him, gives him the feedback he needs to find that spot deep inside Charles and rub over it. Charles sags against the wall, against Erik's arm, and gasps for breath as Erik hits that spot over and over again.
It could go on forever as far as Charles is concerned; after all the times he's fantasized about anything, anything at all, after all the things he's thought about and wished for and dreamed of, being held upright in a shower while Erik finger-fucks him is tearing him to pieces. His mind is one long plea, begging like he's never given anyone before, «Erik, please, please, I can't, please, I need you, need you, please, please, please...»
Erik draws his fingers out, eases Charles a little further under the spray so it runs between his cheeks, so Erik can wash him a little more carefully, rinse the soap away. "You won't do this again," Erik says, hoarsely, and Charles shakes his head in confirmation. "You're done with this."
"Erik, I'm sorry--"
The faucet knobs twist in front of Charles, and the water shuts off. The curtain flings itself back. Erik's towel is still crumpled on the floor, but there are others, and they scrub themselves down as quickly as they can.
Aching as he is, it hasn't escaped Charles's notice that he's clean now, that it was all Erik seemed to want from him. If I rolled you over and put my mouth on your ass the way I've been dreaming about all this time, I'd be licking him out of you, wouldn't I?
Erik's eyes narrow as he runs the towel over his back. "What?"
Charles gives the statement back to him, and adds, «You wouldn't now.»
The emotion that rolls over Erik is-- not angry anymore, not pleased, but smug, maybe: the sense of a man who's about to get his own back. Charles shivers, but it's got nothing to do with the last few water droplets clinging to his skin.
"Don't push your luck," Erik says. Charles nods, and pathetic as it is, he nods gratefully, lets Erik feel the things Charles is feeling right now. Regret, of course, for all the ways he's hurt Erik without realizing, for the way this block between them squandered so much of their time. Anticipation, because for the love of God, how can Erik get him this far and not go further now?
"I should," Erik says, and Charles's heart leaps right into his throat. "I should leave you this way, eager and desperate, I shouldn't touch you or suck you or fuck you tonight, I should make you wait for it--"
"Please, no, God, please, no, anything, Erik, please," Charles says, and he drops right to his knees, right here, trapped between the bathtub and the sink, on a pile of used, soaking wet towels. He reaches up with both hands, slides his hands onto Erik's thighs, licks his lips and parts them and comes forward--
Erik grabs him by the hair and shakes him, hard enough to get Charles's attention. "I'm not one of your fucks," Erik says. "If you want this, you're taking me to bed."
There is literally nothing on this earth Charles wants more. He comes off his feet-- Erik lets his hair go, thankfully-- and leads Erik out to bed, out to his bed, the one nearest the door, like always. Erik glances back into the bathroom, and as Charles's eyes follow Erik's line-of-sight, he sees Erik's shaving kit open and watches as a small metal bottle comes flying into Erik's waiting hand. Of course all of Erik's things are packed into metal, Charles has noticed from time to time that even his buttons have been replaced with metal ones; still, the easy use of his power makes Charles grin.
"Anything you want," Charles promises. "Not just tonight, Erik, tomorrow and the next night and the next--" «You don't have to go slow. We've both been waiting far too long.»
Erik opens his bottle and pours a little lotion into his hand. "I hope you mean that," he murmurs, a warning, a promise, and this time when he presses his fingers into Charles's body, all Charles can do is gasp and pant and squirm. He digs his hands into the bedcovers, tries to rock down onto Erik's hand, but Erik just goes easy, opens Charles up with more care than Charles got in the shower, with a hell of a lot more care than he got from Connor.
And apparently he's not shielding his thoughts from Erik at all, because the minute Connor's name flashes through Charles's mind, Erik's fingers push in hard, and Erik bends down, crushing his mouth to Charles's.
«That bastard,» Erik thinks, almost savage in his intensity. Charles spreads his legs as widely as he can, pushes his ass against Erik's fingers, his whole body begging for more. «His hands on you, I saw him, his hand on your knee at the bar and his hand on your shoulder to stake a claim right in front of me, I wanted to kill him, wanted to tell him to stay away from what's mine--»
«--yours,» Charles sends back, «yours, yours, yours, please, yes, yours.»
It's enough prep, Charles is more than ready, and with their thoughts so tangled, Erik can feel how desperate Charles is getting. He draws his fingers back out of Charles's body-- and then he's there, filling Charles inch-by-inch with his cock, that gorgeous thick cock of his, the one he only first saw tonight, the one he's been fantasizing about for what seems like forever.
It goes on and on, and Charles clutches at Erik's arms, presses up against this incredible stretch, against the feel of Erik filling him, struggling to get more and more and more than that, so damnably impossibly good.
And the thought slides over his brain, that soft growl from earlier, «Your friend, does it feel like this when he fucks you?»
Charles shudders, but he can't just push the thought aside, because it's not his. Erik stares down at him, lips curled back in a half-smile, half-snarl.
"Answer him," Erik says. "Does this feel like that did? Is this what it was like when he fucked you?"
Unbelievable that Erik doesn't know-- he saw everything, saw it through Charles's eyes, felt it through Charles's body. Inconceivable that Erik wouldn't know-- that he could somehow be woven this tightly into Charles's mind right now and still not know the answer to that question.
So it isn't about the question. It's about making Charles give him the answer.
"No," Charles gasps. «Not like this, nothing like this, of course it wasn't, oh God, Erik, Erik--»
«Does he make you beg?» comes through next, Connor's voice, not Erik's. "Beg," Erik growls down at him. "Beg me for it."
«Please! Please, oh God, you never needed to ask, you could have just told me, just pushed me down on the floor and made me, please, God, please, always, I would always have given this to you, would have begged, I'm begging now, please, Erik, please, anything you want, anything...»
Erik drives in, again and again, not letting up for an instant. Charles whimpers-- it's hard, it hurts, it's almost more than he can bear, but he would bear all this a thousand times and more to be here, this way, Erik's body filling him, Erik's thoughts open to him, he wants this to last forever.
«You want him to fuck you like this?», the last thing Charles let Connor say, but it fractures, fragments in Erik's mind, and Erik reaches for Charles's hands and pins them up at the sides of his head. "All those-- every last man you've gone away with since we've been together--" and oh, God, if Charles had only known, if he'd only known that it was together with Erik the same way it's been together for him, all this time, all these weeks, «--all of them, every one of them, all the ones who've looked like me, and you've let them fuck you--»
«--sorry sorry sorry,» Charles lances into Erik's head, and the tears welling up are as much from needing to make that apology as they are from Erik's increasingly brutal thrusts.
«--you wanted them to fuck you, begged them to fuck you, but it wasn't like this, was it? It wasn't like this with all your substitutes--»
«No, no, never,» Charles answers, twisting his wrists in Erik's grip just to feel Erik pin them down harder. «Never like this, please...»
«Your man tonight, Connor,» Erik's mind laced with so much hatred Charles can barely hear the words, «did he make you feel like this? Did he open you up like this, make you hurt for it like this, make you want to hurt for it like this?»
«No,» Charles thinks, and a little recklessly, a little flippant, «and his cock wasn't this big, either,» but somehow it's what Erik needed to hear, something that eases the pressure and lets him slow down, just a little, just enough for Charles to catch his breath.
«I always wanted you,» Charles thinks, «but you wouldn't let me in. I wanted to see inside you, be inside you...»
«Next time,» Erik promises, and the shock and joy of all those two little words mean takes Charles completely by surprise, makes him jerk and gasp under Erik's body and his hands. Next time, so many promises in that phrase, and Charles is coming, whole body lighting with it, his back arching and Erik's mouth coming down to bite at his throat and yes, yes, there's nothing in his world but Erik and all the things about him that make Charles want to say yes, always, forever.
Some time later, Charles comes back to himself; Erik's collapsed on top of him, and Charles has arms and legs wrapped so tightly around Erik that Erik might not be able to move even if he wanted to. From the tenor of his thoughts, though, Charles doesn't think Erik really wants to go anywhere.
"I want this," Erik whispers. "I've wanted this for so long."
"It's yours," Charles whispers back, but no, speech is so clumsy for sentiments like these, so hard to infuse with all the right emotion. «It's yours. I'm yours. I will be, for as long as you'll have me.»
Erik holds on tightly, so very, very tightly. «I'm holding you to that,» he thinks, and Charles can hear the fear and worry and hope, all mixed up together, in his mind.
«Believe me,» Charles tells him.
Believe me. It would be easy to make that an order, a nudge, something that skips them past all these regrets and fears; he could do it.
But with Erik, it's worth earning his way into Erik's trust. Charles presses a kiss to Erik's temple, nothing more, and holds Erik until they shift and squirm, together, into a position that will let them get some sleep.
-end-