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It comes to him belatedly, embarrassingly slow. A night when they’ve fallen to their routines, a game of chess, a scotch on the rocks, when Erik looks up to find Charles watching him with the faintest curl of a smile on his open face.
“You’re in love with me,” Erik says as he realises, before he can stop himself.
“Yes,” Charles says, and he’s beaming, all curves, no angles left in the plush of his mouth, his face. “And I have cause to believe the feeling is mutual.”
And of course it’s true, though that’s been drawn down into a tight point inside him, another instrument, too clumsy to function as a weapon. Of course that’s true, though Erik isn’t sure who knew it first.
“I feel like we’re doing this backwards,” he says, finally, and can’t quite hold back his own smile.
“I don’t know,” Charles says. “I think it suits us,” and Erik pulls him over the board with the curl of a finger, kisses his still smiling mouth.
But Erik isn’t wrong about it being backwards. Everything that happens to him is done backwards, is all wrong.
*
Charles beneath him is a sight, unmarked, easily reddened skin, a blush that spreads down his chest. He marks up beneath Erik’s fingers, his mouth, so Erik always knows where else he must touch in order to have all of him. He’s a roadmap beneath Erik’s skin.
Erik leaves marks as easy as ownership, in the hollow of his hips, sharp unlike the rest of him, in the soft insides of his thighs, along his ribs and against his throat, and wherever his mouth lands, wherever his hands roam. Charles falls apart beneath him every time, easy, no reluctance about it, just opens up around Erik’s fingers, his cock, and takes him in with his eyes fluttering shut and his mouth red and used.
He’s on his knees one morning, early, before the mansion echoes with willful children. Erik has opened him as slowly as he can stand, slower than Charles can stand, swallowed all the noise from his mouth and enjoyed the way the sun came through the curtains and painted Charles’ skin even paler in faint dawn light.
When he sinks into him, he’s pressed up against Charles, his chest aligned with the arch of Charles’ back, fingers curled against his hips. Charles’ head is lowered, the fragile nape of his neck against Erik’s lips. If Erik were an animal, he’d take him by it, sink his teeth in, show dominance, show ownership the only way he knew how to.
“So do it,” Charles says, breathless, and Erik bites down.
*
Charles sleeps beside him, soothes his nightmares with a touch, but he isn’t perfect, and Erik wakes one morning fever hot, images still ripped up beneath his eyelids. When he tries to open them, he realises he can’t move, and that changes a moment later, the clatter of metal all he hears.
He opens his eyes to find half the metal contents of the room sprawled on his bed, Charles’ cheek cut, a cufflink with sharp edges lying innocently in the folds of blanket beside him.
“I’m sorry,” Charles is babbling. “I didn’t mean to betray your trust, I just didn’t know how else to—“
“Don’t,” Erik says, and Charles’ mouth closes, his face still writ with guilt.
Erik wipes the blood off Charles’ cheek with his thumb. It isn’t too deep, won’t require stitches. It could have been worse, and would have been, had Charles not held him still.
“I’m sorry,” Charles repeats.
“I could have really hurt you,” Erik says dumbly.
He doesn’t know why he says it. It’s something they’ve both known all along, that he’s capable of it. He doesn’t know why he talks about it like a hypothetical, when it stands firmly as an eventuality.
Erik gets out of bed, and can’t quite meet Charles’ eyes.
*
Charles finds him one night not far from the mansion, where he’s spread out on the grounds under the scattershot stars, dizzy with their number.
“Stargazing never quite seemed your sport,” Charles says, moving to lie down beside him, close enough that Erik can feel the heat of him.
“Too busy killing people?” Erik asks, turning away from the stars to look at Charles instead.
He can see Charles visibly struggle with an answer, before he lands on “that’s not what I meant.”
Which doesn’t make it untrue.
“Never seemed much yours either,” Erik says.
Charles shrugs, an eloquent curl of his shoulders. “Stars are the same everywhere,” he says.
“You think they mean freedom,” Erik says, and Charles smiles, a surprised quirk of his mouth that appears every time Erik guesses him right, like he thought mind-reading was the only way to read someone. He doesn’t seem to realise he’s painfully transparent.
“The stars looked the same in Birkenau,” Erik says, watches the minute flinch of Charles beside him.
Charles is quiet for a moment. “Didn’t they still mean freedom?” he asks, finally.
“Yes,” Erik says. “And it made them cruel.”
Charles says nothing.
“You see the best in everything,” Erik says.
Charles looks over at him.
“It isn’t a compliment,” Erik says.
“I’d gathered,” Charles says, quiet.
“Nothing’s ever broken you down,” Erik says.
“Not yet,” Charles agrees.
Erik prays it isn’t him.
“You won’t,” Charles says.
“Don’t be willfully blind,” Erik says. Charles has seen him, all the nooks and crannies and sharp edges. He doesn’t know how someone could see all that and still remain naïve.
“Haven’t you ever just had faith?” Charles asks, but despairingly, because he knows the answer.
“Can you name the stars?” Erik asks, and Charles doesn’t start at the change in conversation, just brushes his shoulder against Erik’s and begins to name the constellations widespread above them. He tells them in Latin, in English, and Erik matches them in German, the heat of Charles’ body sinking into the ground, until it’s like he’s a blank space beside Erik, until there’s no warmth left to be found.
*
The night before they leave, Charles is spread out beneath him like an offering. He’s the most beautiful thing Erik has ever seen, and he isn’t enough. Erik doesn’t know what he needs, a fatted calf, the world begging on their knees for forgiveness, for mercy. The world being denied.
“You are not a god,” Charles whispers against his mouth.
Erik thinks, not yet.