X-Men First Class fic: Dismantle the Sun (1/4)
Title: Dismantle the Sun
Pairing: Erik/Charles (M/M)
Rating: R
Warnings: Male/male sex.
Author's Notes: Fix-it. Sequel to Inevitable Things. This fanfic is a belated New Year's present for delirium1995, who pointed out that Charles' recovery in X-Men: First Class was far too quick and painless both physically and emotionally, and as James McAvoy said about Xavier, "he's just had a huge part of his physical life taken away from him, by someone he cares about more than anyone else." So he's going to a dark place in this one.
The story is currently being beta-read. Please feel free to comment with critiques or point out spelling/grammar issues. Please especially point out passages that are clunky, where it is too difficult to follow the action, or where characters do things that strike you as out of character.
N.B. about the possessive apostrophe and proper nouns that end in s: according to Eats Shoots and Leaves, it is now correct to write Charles's; but I grew up with Charles', and it still just looks completely wrong to me to write it the other way. The Bedford Handbook (5th ed.) claims this is an acceptable exception; The 2011 edition of The Elements of Style is quite clear that it is not.
Dismantle the Sun: Part One
~ Prologue ~
Charles Xavier is standing in front of the bathroom mirror.
He is wearing his favourite blue cardigan and an expression that looks wistful, but could be sad. He raises his hand to the glass, resting his fingertips against the reflection.
"I miss you," he says.
He moistens his lip with his tongue and he sighs. "I want to go home," he whispers. It is not the sort of thing Charles Xavier would say, but he says it nonetheless, and leans his forehead against the glass in a gesture from a long-ago childhood.
The door to the hotel suite opens, breaking his reverie; he turns to the sound with a relieved smile. "Magneto!" Charles says, rushing to the door and throwing his arms around the surprised man's shoulders. "You're back."
For a moment, Magneto is speechless. He bows his head to rest his lips against Charles' soft dark hair and takes a deep breath to steady himself.
"Mystique," he says, and Charles melts into his sister with a flicker of blue. The fact that she transforms first into the brown-eyed blonde she has so often been in public goes a long way to expressing what is going on in her head. There's no need for a telepath to read your mind, he thinks, and doesn't think about the ache in his chest, how visceral it is after all these weeks.
~ The Stars Are Not Wanted Now ~
November, 1962
"So here's the thing," Sean said as they walked under the trees, the first of the fallen leaves crunching under their feet. "Tomorrow's gonna be a big day. I could die. You could die."
Moira was torn between concern for this young man, the same sort of concern she would have had for any field agent about to go on their first ops and just beginning to realize that it truly was possible that not everyone would make it back, and an anticipation of just where this sudden turn in their conversation was leading. She had stopped in her tracks and so had he, and now they were standing together in that late afternoon light and dappled shadows.
"So I was thinking, we should do it."
Moira couldn't help barking out a strangled laugh at the realization that it hadn’t just been in her head -- he really was coming on to her. There were a thousand reasons why that was a bad idea. She was going to say so, but the way he was looking at her made her draw a complete blank --
"Oh Sean, when you're older," she heard herself say. Compelled, she stepped forward, placed her hand on his upper arm, felt the firm muscle there under her fingertips. "And just in case you're thinking of getting yourself killed tomorrow--" What the hell am I doing? she wondered. She was leaning closer, her lips were on his--
Her lips were on his and they were kissing.
She was kissing an 18 year old. Practically a boy. And it was quite, quite sweet.
She smiled at his look of delighted shock when she stepped back, away from the embrace. "Don't, because that would be a shame." Oh Moira, she thought, look at yourself, what are you getting yourself into?
Absolutely nothing, Charles replied to the memory. He leaned back in his wheelchair away from her kiss, as bittersweet and meaningless as it had been, his fingers at his temple and her eyes glassed over and frozen for what would hopefully be the last time in her life.
He was ruthless in ripping out Moira's memories, not even bothering to replace them with false ones, just leaving her with a gaping hole where the past several weeks should have been. All of her memories of himself, he obliterated; all of her memories of Erik, he swept clean with the same sense of ownership. Her conversations with Raven all gone, and perhaps there was some unfairness there, because those he kept guiltily for himself, hoping that maybe he could use them to see where he'd gone wrong by his sister. But he left as much of that one with Sean as he could manage, taking away his name, but leaving the sunlight, the trees, the kiss. As much as Charles hated her now, he couldn't shake the feeling that this memory wasn't his to take.
His moral compass might be a little compromised at the moment, but he was still unwilling to blatantly disregard it, if only for his own sense of self-respect.
Alex opened the door of the mansion, hiding his unease at Moira's stiff posture. He held her suitcase in his hand. "Professor?" he asked uncertainly.
"Place it on the ground, please, Alex. Moira was just leaving." His lips quirked a faint smile, asking the automaton in Moira's skin "Weren't you, dear?"
Moira stood upright, turned robotically and picked up the suitcase, then walked down the drive to the government-issued car she'd driven there barely a week ago. Sean held the door open for her and said goodbye to those glassy eyes; Charles refused to feel anything at all, reasoning that honesty here was the best policy, and the truth of the matter was that Moira was simply not there right now. Chalk it up to tough love. The car door closed with a resounding finality, and Charles guided Moira's hands to the steering wheel with a firm push. They all watched her drive away, even Hank McCoy from the windows of his lab; down the drive into the woods the car went, from the gravel drive to the pavement, and then finally to the main road and out of hearing. Only then did Sean turn and walk away from them, to be alone in the grounds behind the house. Alex turned to Charles and asked if he would like to go inside.
"Yes, Alex, thank you. I shall be keeping an eye on her until I can't anymore; if you would be so kind as to bring me some dinner later, I would appreciate it."
Moira turned on a narrow country road away heading away from New Salem, and Charles filled her with a sudden need to visit Buffalo, removing the few memories she'd managed to collect of pressing the brake pedal, looking for cars and finding the road empty, making the turn. When he brought his attention back to himself, he was sitting alone in the library. Alex came in with a tray bearing a sandwich and a cup of tea. "She's almost across the county line," Charles answered before the young man had managed to ask. "I'm removing her memory of signs and unique landmarks as much as I can, to make sure no one will be able to use her to come back and find us."
"Do you think they'll try?" Alex asked gruffly. His worry and his fear were written all across his face, but Charles didn't call him on it.
"It will be obvious very quickly that she knows nothing, she won't even have false leads to offer… I'm sure no one will try to force anything out of her." Charles hid a grimace, because he knew Alex and Hank and Sean still cared. He also cared, he truly did, but whenever he listened to the gaping silence in his mind where Erik was supposed to be, he always came back to her fault, her fault, her fault, and Erik's voice brokenly, angrily, desperately saying SHE DID THIS.
She pulled a gun on Erik. Charles and he had been fighting, that was true -- with elbows and fists and words, all things that were fair to fight with when passions were high between equals and lives were on the line. He had wanted to stop Erik, yes; he was desperate to have Erik back in his mind instead of that awful emptiness that descended when he had put on Shaw's helmet. But he would never try to kill Erik, and she had. How could it have ended in anything but tragedy? Small comfort that the final reckoning was so small, just one man's loss, and not the lives of hundreds.
Charles reached out, wiped Moira's slate clean again; almost a hundred miles away, and he could still remove the memory of passing a local bus with the high school's name emblazoned on the side, of paying a toll. Since his time working with Cerebro, his range had improved; but the numb spot in his mind -- Erik -- was like a loose tooth that he kept worrying, and he wondered if he was constantly pushing himself in a misguided attempt to reach the one person who could fill it.
The tea was cold by the time he remembered it.
* * * * * *
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
"Nah. You just picked that 'cuz you like the sound of your name." Alex was about to take another swig of his Coca-cola, then added nonchalantly, "Batman and Robin."
"Which one of them would be Robin?" Hank asked incredulously. "Really. I was thinking something more classical."
"You mean ‘Et Too Brutus’ and that other guy?" Sean asked.
Alex and Hank both winced, though probably not for the same reason. "No," Hank answered, "I was thinking more along the lines of Herakles and Iolaus. Or Acchilles and Petrocholes."
"Beast, you've gotta be kidding!" Alex gesticulated a little too much; Hank's sensitive ears heard each scattered drop of sticky sweet liquid hit the tiled floor. "You think the Professor's a queer?"
Sean was looking at Alex with the uncharacteristic seriousness he'd been showing a lot lately. "What makes you think that?" he asked quietly.
"What kid doesn't read about Greek heroes and their 'special sidekicks'?" He turned back to Hank, "I can read, you know. And you obviously read all the time, four-eyes, so we must be thinking of the same story, right?"
"Well, it's certainly true that--"
There was the sound of a thump and metal scraping a wall, followed by Charles' distinctive "dammit!" and a muttered "sheisse," and then he had wheeled himself to the door of the kitchen, shaking his hand where he'd obviously whacked it misjudging the corner again.
"Ah, gentlemen, " he started, looking sheepishly at them, then wincing and sighing in exasperation. "I'd apologize for interrupting, but it's obvious from the hotrods, rainbows, and " he pointed to Hank, Sean, and finally Alex, raising his eyebrows “unicorns - really Alex? - that you are all shouting at me, that whatever it is you were discussing you'd rather I didn't ask about. So I won't." He started to reach for the wheels of the chair, then paused. "I will, however, ask if there's any of Mrs. Tydahl's pie left. The peach with blackberry?"
"Yeah," Alex leapt away from the counter he'd been leaning against and launched himself towards the fridge. "Let me get that for you, Prof."
"There's no need--" Charles started, but cut himself off. Hank had turned and already fetched a plate, and was now scrabbling -- literally -- for a fork, as he was still getting used to working with claws. Sean looked visibly pained that he didn't have something useful to do, and it was all so sweet and so sad at once, how desperate they were to do any little thing they could for him, their newly broken teacher.
* * * * * * *
December, 1962
It is early morning, civil twilight with a hint of warm orange marking the eastern horizon, and Charles Xavier is running on one of his favorite paths behind the mansion. His shoes have not yet gotten soaked; they pass easily through the light dusting of snow that has covered the hard frost from the previous night, leaving footprints of broken grass with a steady crunching accompanying the sound of his breaths, the rustle of his clothes as he swings his arms. This is how he knows he's dreaming, and explains why he is loath to wake when true morning breaks.
Everything works as it should when he dreams; his quadriceps get fatigued, his calves threaten to cramp from the cold, his toes hurt when he stubs them, they feel the cold that seeps from the ground and his feet slowly turn to blocks of ice. It's when they become numb that he turns around and heads back to the mansion, back to the others' dreams and his own broken life. When he is honest with himself, he is disappointed that the depression has followed him even here, that he thinks of himself in such terms; but he has been overwhelmed of late with the simple tasks of life -- getting out of bed, getting dressed, relieving himself -- that he must allow himself a certain amount of self-deception.
He rounds a bend, passing from the birches out to join the road that parallels the river's edge. The river and the wide open ground along it is not a feature of the Xavier estate; it is a half-remembered place his parents had vacationed when he was very little, and he could only recall this side of the river with any consistency. Tonight -- or this pre-dawn -- the other side was accessible by an old wooden bridge, partially covered, and beyond it appeared to be farmland shrouded in fog, the gray outlines of a barn and grain silo visible like ghosts.
“Mr. Xavier?" a young voice called out, distant but preternaturally clear, a trick of the fog and the cold. “Professor Charles Xavier?”
Charles slowed to a stop, looking around for the source of the voice. Silence suddenly, not even the sound of his own breathing, though his breaths formed white puffs in the cold air. There, just this side of the covered portion of the bridge, a young boy in jeans and an oversized plaid wool coat stood stock-still. Not a shiver, though he wore no hat or scarf or mittens, and Charles found himself shivering on his behalf. Where is that child's mother? he wondered.
“Yes? Who are you?” he called back.
“John Turner,” the boy answered.
“Can I do something for you, John?”
The boy looked down and shuffled his feet. Charles got an impression of faded freckles and a paleness that spoke of too much time spent indoors. “Um, can you come with me? I visit people when they're dreaming, and someone asked if I could invite you to mine, since I'm a neutral place. Like Switzerland?”
A sudden caw went up behind him, from the birches; a flock of tiny nuthatches, startled, took to the air with a sudden fluttering of wings. When Charles looked again, the bridge was closer, his sleeping mind having already decided to venture forth, but with caution. Forewarned is forearmed, though at the moment he appeared to be armed only with his sweatclothes and his wits. It would have to suffice.
He stepped on the bridge and took the boy's proffered hand. John Turner smiled, and Charles gathered that the child -- perhaps eleven or twelve -- did not enjoy much human contact.
“You can't read my mind, Mr. Xavier, can you?” he asked, obviously anxious.
“No, John, I can't," he said, then corrected himself, "Well, not precisely. Wandering through someone's dream is much like reading the waking mind; but the sleeping mind is a much harder nut to crack, as it speaks in imagery, not in words per se. Even that is hard to read, because it is so personal. A bridge though -- that's obvious. The fog, hiding the rest...” the road they walked along was little more than two tracks pressed into the dirt, and it started to rise up a hill. “It's good to keep your privacy. Do you often invite others to visit?”
“No,” the boy answered. “Most people don't know they're dreaming, so they don't know I'm not just something they dreamed up. It's like they can't see the borders, so they can't cross them.”
“Can you hear what people are thinking when you're awake?” Charles asked gently. But the only reply was the sound of his own feet clomping on the hard-packed earth. John's steps made no sound, and Charles wondered at that.
“A lady told me you could, and she could, but not here; so she asked if I could find you and bring you here, and she told me your name and that you were in New York, and she showed me a map.”
Emma Frost. Appropriate, then, that Charles had been dreaming of running in the snow. He wondered how far away she was; he knew her range wasn't as good as his, and he would have felt her, surely, if she were in Westchester.
“Is it Miss Frost I'm to meet, then?" He had no interest in seeing her, although he often wondered what she thought of Charles having left her at the CIA when he'd gone through and removed all record of his and his students' involvement in the Shaw debacle. Then Erik had liberated her, in an apparent attempt to become the man who'd been the villain of his life, and Charles didn't know what to make of that, either.
“No,” the boy shook his head, his long bangs falling in his eyes. “She said she was just a ’lackey’, whatever that is.”
“She meant she works for someone else. Is it her boss, then?” Even dreaming, Charles' breath caught at that, and he focused on keeping his words even and light. Oh Erik, what have you been up to?
“I think so?” the boy said, unsure. And there, at the top of the hill, a figure stood wrapped in the fog and -- ridiculously, Charles thought -- a cape, like a Roman Centurion, the helm held loosely in his arms.
That's when Charles realized the numb spot in his mind wasn't numb at all, but filled with a soft, distant warmth. “Erik,” he said, his voice betraying his relief, even to his own ears. “Or is it Magneto, now?” he added, growing wary again as they drew near.
“Charles,” Erik replied without answering. At least he hadn't called him Professor X. “Thank you for coming.” A barely perceptible nod of the head, a slight inclination, but nothing of the warmth with which Erik used to look at him. It did nothing to relieve the tension mounting between Charles' shoulder blades, the grip tightening at the back of his neck.
John's hand slipped out of his, the boy shifting his weight to put himself as far away from them without actually moving his feet.
“It's alright, John, we're just going to talk for a bit about grown-up things. If you'd rather wait somewhere else...?”
Wide eyes, green irises with pale green interior and dark rim -- a polymorphism in OCA2, associated with freckles and moles, a common mutation in the northern human population -- met his. “I gotta go. You don't need me to show you the way back, you'll just go when you wake up.”
“And if you wake up?”
John shrugged. He had already backed up to the edge of the hill, hovering on the edge.
"Will this place remain, even if you're not here?" Charles pressed on, wondering as he did whether it was possible for John to know what happened to his dreamscape when he was elsewhere; maybe it was a moot point and he was merely indulging in philosophy.
"It stays as long as someone's in it," John answered, matter-of-fact. He turned and took a step into nothing, disappearing much as Azazel did, and leaving the two of them apparently alone.
“Well.” Charles faced Erik, putting his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants for lack of anything better. “How is Raven?” he asked, the thought tumbling off his lips as fast as it came to mind. He'd very carefully not thought of her for weeks now.
“Adjusting.”
Charles nodded and looked down, discomfited by Erik's unflinching gaze and terse replies. He tried not to lick his lips, tried to ignore whatever cruel force of attraction was tugging him forward. It felt as though he were straining backwards against a fast-flowing stream pulling him towards the rapids - or perhaps the open ocean, where he could drown. He looked up to meet Erik's gaze, bravely, and then he did feel like he was drowning. So much for hardening his heart against the man; Charles Xavier was soft, so very soft, as soft as melting snow.
“I had her things stored. If she ever wants them, I can have them sent wherever.” That won a blink from Erik. “Will you tell her that, please?” Another blink. Perhaps if Charles took a careful record, he could devise a codebook to translate the blinks into actual communication.
They stood in silence for a while, staring at each other and saying nothing. When it had just started to become unbearable, Erik abruptly crouched down, placing the helmet on the ground before standing up again. When Charles looked back down at Erik's feet (in those smart red boots, the sort of which Raven would be jealous), the helmet had disappeared.
“Thank you for trusting me,” Charles said, while another Charles Xavier, young and heartbroken, howled over the injustice of it -- wasn't it Erik who should be trying to win his trust now? But the Charles who answered a summons of his own free will was calm and controlled and -- let us admit this -- concerned. Concerned for Raven, concerned for the handful of other mutants alone against the world which had not turned out to be as friendly as Charles had hoped it would, concerned for Erik, the "magnetic super weapon" which both superpowers and numerous smaller states with ambitions to the title were currently racing to find and control, or failing that, to find and destroy. His hand was up, reached out -- as quick as thought in this place, too late to undo the gesture -- and held against Erik's cheek, his thumb caressing the cheekbone, smearing the wetness there into a shimmer beneath the eye.
“Oh come here,” Charles muttered, the words escaping his lips as the concepts of something he was brought here for and something he was supposed to say faded quietly away. His hand slipped to the back of Erik's neck, tugging him down, and they were kissing like they had that last night; no, not quite. That night had been passion and fear of a different sort, whereas this was more like the nights they shared on their recruiting trip, once they'd gotten accustomed to each other, when they still had the future together to look forward to.
Erik didn't speak; he didn't have to speak, not because Charles was in his mind, feeling his words as soon as he thought them, but because Erik's body spoke for him. Desperation in the strength of his arms reaching behind Charles and holding him close, delight reflected in the quickening of breath, the relaxing of his shoulders as he found comfort in the familiarity of it all. For it was familiar, the way they fell together, the way Erik smoothed Charles' back and rested his hands in the hollow at the base of his hips, the way Charles gripped Erik's shoulders and arms, and ran his hands along the lithe musculature and sharp angles, curling his fingers to dig into the skin the way Erik so loved. The way Erik nuzzled Charles' jaw as soon as he broke the kiss for a breath of air, the moan that started deep in the back of his throat and ended in a breathy hiss when Erik licked the skin there and ended with a sharp nip, teeth to skin. When Erik had grown comfortable enough to take what he wanted, as opposed to just letting himself be taken, and Charles had felt proud of that, as well.
"You left--" Erik breathed against Charles' throat, breaking the spell, and Charles pushed him away and turned to face the bank of fog that swallowed the world beyond the curve of the hill.
"You're the one who left," he said dully, suddenly numb, save for the twist in the pit of his stomach. Erik's hands found his arms, the calloused fingers pressing against his bare skin -- ah, the sweatshirt was gone, quick as thought, and Erik's bare chest pressed against his back.
"Let me finish," he growled, but Charles heard the pleading underneath. "You left a gap in my life, Charles. I didn't understand, I never… no one…" He nuzzled the back of Charles' head, running his nose against his ear, his breath warm and his tongue so close, and then Charles was leaning back against him, because he really couldn't help it. His right hand drifted up over his shoulder to cup the base of Erik's skull, his thumb against the back of Erik's neck, holding him fast.
"You left a gap in me, too," Charles admitted, and then they stopped speaking altogether, sinking to their knees on the soft ground, the clover moist with dew. Erik's hands slid to his waist, his hips, and one hand slipped along the curve of his hip bone to curl around the base of his cock. Convenient, the sudden lack of clothes. And how easy it was for Charles to crane his neck so he could catch Erik's mouth in a kiss, hot and so hungry.
It had been weeks without word, nothing but a hint in the news of Castro's mysterious new adviser, nothing but a whisper in the mind of a secretary at Moira's office who thought she saw a doppleganger, but decided it must have been deja vu. It had been weeks of loneliness since that last night, after weeks of spending almost every night together.
Charles almost forgot that he had to say the words out loud; and then it turned out that he didn't, that Erik knew what he meant when he shifted his hips just so against Erik's stiff cock, aching for the fullness of him.
"Do you promise--" Erik asked, his hand slipping up the shaft to rub the sensitive spot just under the head, a fond gesture if ever there was one, and Charles nodded, of course, and he said it out loud, "Of course, love."
And he wouldn't dwell on that.
Erik let go and leaned back just a bit to give them room, to realign themselves kneeling together on the ground, and Charles reached back to guide him into place. When he gasped - lust never quite overcame the initial discomfort, and Erik was bloody well endowed - Erik reached a hand to his ankle, a warm comforting touch, a brief squeeze on the Achilles tendon. And then they were sliding together with a sigh, and Erik’s hands were on his hips again, running down his legs, slipping off from the sweat and then he was wrapping his arms around Charles in a tight embrace, pressing against Charles’ back and just rolling his hips in a persistent rhythm, keeping as much of their skin in contact as possible, as if he couldn’t hold him close enough.
Somewhere along the way they had leaned forward, and Charles braced himself on his arms, Erik still clinging to him so that Charles had to bear both their weight. It was oddly comforting, knowing that he could so, easily, and probably even in the waking world - or at least, he could if he weren’t being distracted. He curled his fingers into the mat of clover and the dirt underneath, torn between wanting to collapse on the earth and let Erik bring him slowly and gently to the edge and over, and wanting to break from his grasp and slam his ass against Erik to make him thrust hard and fast and as desperate as he felt. He was surprised when he felt Erik start to shake against him, and then rueful -- this must be what it is like to have sex with someone when you can’t read their mind -- and Erik was mumbling something with his face pressed against his neck.
It might have been his name.
Erik’s hand was on his cock again, stroking, he himself being spent. “Erik,” Charles said, his voice thick and ragged, “Erik--” But whatever it was he meant to say, he couldn’t; he’d turned to face Erik, and his hands were on Erik’s chest, pressing him down to the ground, and they were kissing, open mouths and the taste of Erik -- copper and saltwater, a tang of leather from some forgotten memory, a bitter aftertaste on the back of the tongue -- claiming all his attention.
His hands were on Erik’s shoulders, trying to push him down, push him away to break the kiss; Erik’s palms were on the sides of his face, his long fingertips brushing his temples, his thumbs caressing his jaw, stroking the side of his neck, unwilling to let go. Finally Charles slipped his hands to the insides of Erik’s wrists and took hold of them, guiding them down to rest against the outside of his hips. Erik’s fingers curled obligingly into the skin there, and Charles couldn’t help but smile -- I feel that -- and -- Oh how I’ve missed it. The feeling swelled inside him, threatened to choke him, and looking at Erik like that, so relaxed and open, looking up at him with so much sheer happiness and trust, mistaking Charles’ expression for having missed him, not just having missed the ability to press his hips against a lover and feel that lovers’ hands gripping his ass tightly in response, and Charles felt as if he were being sliced in two; “You left a gap in my life,” Erik’s words echoed in his memory.
“Let’s fill that gap, then,” Charles muttered quietly. He nudged Erik’s legs apart, took himself in hand and pressed into Erik with no preamble. It was cruel to do that, and he expected Erik’s gaze to harden instead of soften, expected a snarl instead of a delighted gasp. But this was as much Erik’s dream as his own, and so Erik was as ready for Charles to thrust inside him as if Charles had taken his time to prepare him. Or perhaps it did hurt -- Charles jerked forward experimentally, the image of a battering ram springing to mind unbidden -- and Erik wanted to be hurt, deserved to be hurt, as much as...
... Erik had tossed his head back, his throat arched gracefully, gasping, his arms flailed out to his side, his hands clenching into fists, and Charles’ self-disgust turned into momentary panic, until he felt one of Erik’s calves pressing firmly against his buttock. Yes, that said. More. “Really?” Charles asked, a chuckle burbling up through all that confused emotional mess writhing inside him, and Erik gave him the briefest of incredulous looks before whacking his head against the ground again and clenching his leg and shoving himself against Charles. Charles reached forward to dig his fingernails into Erik’s pectoral muscles, grinning in spite of himself. Then he slid his hands down Erik’s sides -- the man was lithe as a greyhound -- and held his hips firmly as he proceeded to kindly fuck the living daylights out of him.
He did not cry Erik’s name when he came.
It was only a whisper.
* * * * * *
3:30 am, the clock said. "Time to turn over," it meant, just as it had at 11:30 and 1:30, just as it would again at 5:30; the body must be shifted every two hours -- left, back, right, back -- or ulcers will develop and get infected, and then it's back to the hospital.
But this time, Charles felt -- well, sticky. He smiled in the dark, even though he was annoyed at needing to reach for the washcloth he kept by the bed, in case he spilled the glass of water he kept on the nightstand. Well, this is new, he thought as he spilled the water onto the cloth on purpose, so he could scrub the tell-tale pool of ejaculate away. He tugged himself into position on his right side and wiped the hair from his eyes, the roots stiffened by his sweat. But I'm not complaining.
Chapter 2...
Pairing: Erik/Charles (M/M)
Rating: R
Warnings: Male/male sex.
Author's Notes: Fix-it. Sequel to Inevitable Things. This fanfic is a belated New Year's present for delirium1995, who pointed out that Charles' recovery in X-Men: First Class was far too quick and painless both physically and emotionally, and as James McAvoy said about Xavier, "he's just had a huge part of his physical life taken away from him, by someone he cares about more than anyone else." So he's going to a dark place in this one.
The story is currently being beta-read. Please feel free to comment with critiques or point out spelling/grammar issues. Please especially point out passages that are clunky, where it is too difficult to follow the action, or where characters do things that strike you as out of character.
N.B. about the possessive apostrophe and proper nouns that end in s: according to Eats Shoots and Leaves, it is now correct to write Charles's; but I grew up with Charles', and it still just looks completely wrong to me to write it the other way. The Bedford Handbook (5th ed.) claims this is an acceptable exception; The 2011 edition of The Elements of Style is quite clear that it is not.
Dismantle the Sun: Part One
~ Prologue ~
Charles Xavier is standing in front of the bathroom mirror.
He is wearing his favourite blue cardigan and an expression that looks wistful, but could be sad. He raises his hand to the glass, resting his fingertips against the reflection.
"I miss you," he says.
He moistens his lip with his tongue and he sighs. "I want to go home," he whispers. It is not the sort of thing Charles Xavier would say, but he says it nonetheless, and leans his forehead against the glass in a gesture from a long-ago childhood.
The door to the hotel suite opens, breaking his reverie; he turns to the sound with a relieved smile. "Magneto!" Charles says, rushing to the door and throwing his arms around the surprised man's shoulders. "You're back."
For a moment, Magneto is speechless. He bows his head to rest his lips against Charles' soft dark hair and takes a deep breath to steady himself.
"Mystique," he says, and Charles melts into his sister with a flicker of blue. The fact that she transforms first into the brown-eyed blonde she has so often been in public goes a long way to expressing what is going on in her head. There's no need for a telepath to read your mind, he thinks, and doesn't think about the ache in his chest, how visceral it is after all these weeks.
~ The Stars Are Not Wanted Now ~
November, 1962
"So here's the thing," Sean said as they walked under the trees, the first of the fallen leaves crunching under their feet. "Tomorrow's gonna be a big day. I could die. You could die."
Moira was torn between concern for this young man, the same sort of concern she would have had for any field agent about to go on their first ops and just beginning to realize that it truly was possible that not everyone would make it back, and an anticipation of just where this sudden turn in their conversation was leading. She had stopped in her tracks and so had he, and now they were standing together in that late afternoon light and dappled shadows.
"So I was thinking, we should do it."
Moira couldn't help barking out a strangled laugh at the realization that it hadn’t just been in her head -- he really was coming on to her. There were a thousand reasons why that was a bad idea. She was going to say so, but the way he was looking at her made her draw a complete blank --
"Oh Sean, when you're older," she heard herself say. Compelled, she stepped forward, placed her hand on his upper arm, felt the firm muscle there under her fingertips. "And just in case you're thinking of getting yourself killed tomorrow--" What the hell am I doing? she wondered. She was leaning closer, her lips were on his--
Her lips were on his and they were kissing.
She was kissing an 18 year old. Practically a boy. And it was quite, quite sweet.
She smiled at his look of delighted shock when she stepped back, away from the embrace. "Don't, because that would be a shame." Oh Moira, she thought, look at yourself, what are you getting yourself into?
Absolutely nothing, Charles replied to the memory. He leaned back in his wheelchair away from her kiss, as bittersweet and meaningless as it had been, his fingers at his temple and her eyes glassed over and frozen for what would hopefully be the last time in her life.
He was ruthless in ripping out Moira's memories, not even bothering to replace them with false ones, just leaving her with a gaping hole where the past several weeks should have been. All of her memories of himself, he obliterated; all of her memories of Erik, he swept clean with the same sense of ownership. Her conversations with Raven all gone, and perhaps there was some unfairness there, because those he kept guiltily for himself, hoping that maybe he could use them to see where he'd gone wrong by his sister. But he left as much of that one with Sean as he could manage, taking away his name, but leaving the sunlight, the trees, the kiss. As much as Charles hated her now, he couldn't shake the feeling that this memory wasn't his to take.
His moral compass might be a little compromised at the moment, but he was still unwilling to blatantly disregard it, if only for his own sense of self-respect.
Alex opened the door of the mansion, hiding his unease at Moira's stiff posture. He held her suitcase in his hand. "Professor?" he asked uncertainly.
"Place it on the ground, please, Alex. Moira was just leaving." His lips quirked a faint smile, asking the automaton in Moira's skin "Weren't you, dear?"
Moira stood upright, turned robotically and picked up the suitcase, then walked down the drive to the government-issued car she'd driven there barely a week ago. Sean held the door open for her and said goodbye to those glassy eyes; Charles refused to feel anything at all, reasoning that honesty here was the best policy, and the truth of the matter was that Moira was simply not there right now. Chalk it up to tough love. The car door closed with a resounding finality, and Charles guided Moira's hands to the steering wheel with a firm push. They all watched her drive away, even Hank McCoy from the windows of his lab; down the drive into the woods the car went, from the gravel drive to the pavement, and then finally to the main road and out of hearing. Only then did Sean turn and walk away from them, to be alone in the grounds behind the house. Alex turned to Charles and asked if he would like to go inside.
"Yes, Alex, thank you. I shall be keeping an eye on her until I can't anymore; if you would be so kind as to bring me some dinner later, I would appreciate it."
Moira turned on a narrow country road away heading away from New Salem, and Charles filled her with a sudden need to visit Buffalo, removing the few memories she'd managed to collect of pressing the brake pedal, looking for cars and finding the road empty, making the turn. When he brought his attention back to himself, he was sitting alone in the library. Alex came in with a tray bearing a sandwich and a cup of tea. "She's almost across the county line," Charles answered before the young man had managed to ask. "I'm removing her memory of signs and unique landmarks as much as I can, to make sure no one will be able to use her to come back and find us."
"Do you think they'll try?" Alex asked gruffly. His worry and his fear were written all across his face, but Charles didn't call him on it.
"It will be obvious very quickly that she knows nothing, she won't even have false leads to offer… I'm sure no one will try to force anything out of her." Charles hid a grimace, because he knew Alex and Hank and Sean still cared. He also cared, he truly did, but whenever he listened to the gaping silence in his mind where Erik was supposed to be, he always came back to her fault, her fault, her fault, and Erik's voice brokenly, angrily, desperately saying SHE DID THIS.
She pulled a gun on Erik. Charles and he had been fighting, that was true -- with elbows and fists and words, all things that were fair to fight with when passions were high between equals and lives were on the line. He had wanted to stop Erik, yes; he was desperate to have Erik back in his mind instead of that awful emptiness that descended when he had put on Shaw's helmet. But he would never try to kill Erik, and she had. How could it have ended in anything but tragedy? Small comfort that the final reckoning was so small, just one man's loss, and not the lives of hundreds.
Charles reached out, wiped Moira's slate clean again; almost a hundred miles away, and he could still remove the memory of passing a local bus with the high school's name emblazoned on the side, of paying a toll. Since his time working with Cerebro, his range had improved; but the numb spot in his mind -- Erik -- was like a loose tooth that he kept worrying, and he wondered if he was constantly pushing himself in a misguided attempt to reach the one person who could fill it.
The tea was cold by the time he remembered it.
* * * * * *
"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
"Nah. You just picked that 'cuz you like the sound of your name." Alex was about to take another swig of his Coca-cola, then added nonchalantly, "Batman and Robin."
"Which one of them would be Robin?" Hank asked incredulously. "Really. I was thinking something more classical."
"You mean ‘Et Too Brutus’ and that other guy?" Sean asked.
Alex and Hank both winced, though probably not for the same reason. "No," Hank answered, "I was thinking more along the lines of Herakles and Iolaus. Or Acchilles and Petrocholes."
"Beast, you've gotta be kidding!" Alex gesticulated a little too much; Hank's sensitive ears heard each scattered drop of sticky sweet liquid hit the tiled floor. "You think the Professor's a queer?"
Sean was looking at Alex with the uncharacteristic seriousness he'd been showing a lot lately. "What makes you think that?" he asked quietly.
"What kid doesn't read about Greek heroes and their 'special sidekicks'?" He turned back to Hank, "I can read, you know. And you obviously read all the time, four-eyes, so we must be thinking of the same story, right?"
"Well, it's certainly true that--"
There was the sound of a thump and metal scraping a wall, followed by Charles' distinctive "dammit!" and a muttered "sheisse," and then he had wheeled himself to the door of the kitchen, shaking his hand where he'd obviously whacked it misjudging the corner again.
"Ah, gentlemen, " he started, looking sheepishly at them, then wincing and sighing in exasperation. "I'd apologize for interrupting, but it's obvious from the hotrods, rainbows, and " he pointed to Hank, Sean, and finally Alex, raising his eyebrows “unicorns - really Alex? - that you are all shouting at me, that whatever it is you were discussing you'd rather I didn't ask about. So I won't." He started to reach for the wheels of the chair, then paused. "I will, however, ask if there's any of Mrs. Tydahl's pie left. The peach with blackberry?"
"Yeah," Alex leapt away from the counter he'd been leaning against and launched himself towards the fridge. "Let me get that for you, Prof."
"There's no need--" Charles started, but cut himself off. Hank had turned and already fetched a plate, and was now scrabbling -- literally -- for a fork, as he was still getting used to working with claws. Sean looked visibly pained that he didn't have something useful to do, and it was all so sweet and so sad at once, how desperate they were to do any little thing they could for him, their newly broken teacher.
* * * * * * *
December, 1962
It is early morning, civil twilight with a hint of warm orange marking the eastern horizon, and Charles Xavier is running on one of his favorite paths behind the mansion. His shoes have not yet gotten soaked; they pass easily through the light dusting of snow that has covered the hard frost from the previous night, leaving footprints of broken grass with a steady crunching accompanying the sound of his breaths, the rustle of his clothes as he swings his arms. This is how he knows he's dreaming, and explains why he is loath to wake when true morning breaks.
Everything works as it should when he dreams; his quadriceps get fatigued, his calves threaten to cramp from the cold, his toes hurt when he stubs them, they feel the cold that seeps from the ground and his feet slowly turn to blocks of ice. It's when they become numb that he turns around and heads back to the mansion, back to the others' dreams and his own broken life. When he is honest with himself, he is disappointed that the depression has followed him even here, that he thinks of himself in such terms; but he has been overwhelmed of late with the simple tasks of life -- getting out of bed, getting dressed, relieving himself -- that he must allow himself a certain amount of self-deception.
He rounds a bend, passing from the birches out to join the road that parallels the river's edge. The river and the wide open ground along it is not a feature of the Xavier estate; it is a half-remembered place his parents had vacationed when he was very little, and he could only recall this side of the river with any consistency. Tonight -- or this pre-dawn -- the other side was accessible by an old wooden bridge, partially covered, and beyond it appeared to be farmland shrouded in fog, the gray outlines of a barn and grain silo visible like ghosts.
“Mr. Xavier?" a young voice called out, distant but preternaturally clear, a trick of the fog and the cold. “Professor Charles Xavier?”
Charles slowed to a stop, looking around for the source of the voice. Silence suddenly, not even the sound of his own breathing, though his breaths formed white puffs in the cold air. There, just this side of the covered portion of the bridge, a young boy in jeans and an oversized plaid wool coat stood stock-still. Not a shiver, though he wore no hat or scarf or mittens, and Charles found himself shivering on his behalf. Where is that child's mother? he wondered.
“Yes? Who are you?” he called back.
“John Turner,” the boy answered.
“Can I do something for you, John?”
The boy looked down and shuffled his feet. Charles got an impression of faded freckles and a paleness that spoke of too much time spent indoors. “Um, can you come with me? I visit people when they're dreaming, and someone asked if I could invite you to mine, since I'm a neutral place. Like Switzerland?”
A sudden caw went up behind him, from the birches; a flock of tiny nuthatches, startled, took to the air with a sudden fluttering of wings. When Charles looked again, the bridge was closer, his sleeping mind having already decided to venture forth, but with caution. Forewarned is forearmed, though at the moment he appeared to be armed only with his sweatclothes and his wits. It would have to suffice.
He stepped on the bridge and took the boy's proffered hand. John Turner smiled, and Charles gathered that the child -- perhaps eleven or twelve -- did not enjoy much human contact.
“You can't read my mind, Mr. Xavier, can you?” he asked, obviously anxious.
“No, John, I can't," he said, then corrected himself, "Well, not precisely. Wandering through someone's dream is much like reading the waking mind; but the sleeping mind is a much harder nut to crack, as it speaks in imagery, not in words per se. Even that is hard to read, because it is so personal. A bridge though -- that's obvious. The fog, hiding the rest...” the road they walked along was little more than two tracks pressed into the dirt, and it started to rise up a hill. “It's good to keep your privacy. Do you often invite others to visit?”
“No,” the boy answered. “Most people don't know they're dreaming, so they don't know I'm not just something they dreamed up. It's like they can't see the borders, so they can't cross them.”
“Can you hear what people are thinking when you're awake?” Charles asked gently. But the only reply was the sound of his own feet clomping on the hard-packed earth. John's steps made no sound, and Charles wondered at that.
“A lady told me you could, and she could, but not here; so she asked if I could find you and bring you here, and she told me your name and that you were in New York, and she showed me a map.”
Emma Frost. Appropriate, then, that Charles had been dreaming of running in the snow. He wondered how far away she was; he knew her range wasn't as good as his, and he would have felt her, surely, if she were in Westchester.
“Is it Miss Frost I'm to meet, then?" He had no interest in seeing her, although he often wondered what she thought of Charles having left her at the CIA when he'd gone through and removed all record of his and his students' involvement in the Shaw debacle. Then Erik had liberated her, in an apparent attempt to become the man who'd been the villain of his life, and Charles didn't know what to make of that, either.
“No,” the boy shook his head, his long bangs falling in his eyes. “She said she was just a ’lackey’, whatever that is.”
“She meant she works for someone else. Is it her boss, then?” Even dreaming, Charles' breath caught at that, and he focused on keeping his words even and light. Oh Erik, what have you been up to?
“I think so?” the boy said, unsure. And there, at the top of the hill, a figure stood wrapped in the fog and -- ridiculously, Charles thought -- a cape, like a Roman Centurion, the helm held loosely in his arms.
That's when Charles realized the numb spot in his mind wasn't numb at all, but filled with a soft, distant warmth. “Erik,” he said, his voice betraying his relief, even to his own ears. “Or is it Magneto, now?” he added, growing wary again as they drew near.
“Charles,” Erik replied without answering. At least he hadn't called him Professor X. “Thank you for coming.” A barely perceptible nod of the head, a slight inclination, but nothing of the warmth with which Erik used to look at him. It did nothing to relieve the tension mounting between Charles' shoulder blades, the grip tightening at the back of his neck.
John's hand slipped out of his, the boy shifting his weight to put himself as far away from them without actually moving his feet.
“It's alright, John, we're just going to talk for a bit about grown-up things. If you'd rather wait somewhere else...?”
Wide eyes, green irises with pale green interior and dark rim -- a polymorphism in OCA2, associated with freckles and moles, a common mutation in the northern human population -- met his. “I gotta go. You don't need me to show you the way back, you'll just go when you wake up.”
“And if you wake up?”
John shrugged. He had already backed up to the edge of the hill, hovering on the edge.
"Will this place remain, even if you're not here?" Charles pressed on, wondering as he did whether it was possible for John to know what happened to his dreamscape when he was elsewhere; maybe it was a moot point and he was merely indulging in philosophy.
"It stays as long as someone's in it," John answered, matter-of-fact. He turned and took a step into nothing, disappearing much as Azazel did, and leaving the two of them apparently alone.
“Well.” Charles faced Erik, putting his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants for lack of anything better. “How is Raven?” he asked, the thought tumbling off his lips as fast as it came to mind. He'd very carefully not thought of her for weeks now.
“Adjusting.”
Charles nodded and looked down, discomfited by Erik's unflinching gaze and terse replies. He tried not to lick his lips, tried to ignore whatever cruel force of attraction was tugging him forward. It felt as though he were straining backwards against a fast-flowing stream pulling him towards the rapids - or perhaps the open ocean, where he could drown. He looked up to meet Erik's gaze, bravely, and then he did feel like he was drowning. So much for hardening his heart against the man; Charles Xavier was soft, so very soft, as soft as melting snow.
“I had her things stored. If she ever wants them, I can have them sent wherever.” That won a blink from Erik. “Will you tell her that, please?” Another blink. Perhaps if Charles took a careful record, he could devise a codebook to translate the blinks into actual communication.
They stood in silence for a while, staring at each other and saying nothing. When it had just started to become unbearable, Erik abruptly crouched down, placing the helmet on the ground before standing up again. When Charles looked back down at Erik's feet (in those smart red boots, the sort of which Raven would be jealous), the helmet had disappeared.
“Thank you for trusting me,” Charles said, while another Charles Xavier, young and heartbroken, howled over the injustice of it -- wasn't it Erik who should be trying to win his trust now? But the Charles who answered a summons of his own free will was calm and controlled and -- let us admit this -- concerned. Concerned for Raven, concerned for the handful of other mutants alone against the world which had not turned out to be as friendly as Charles had hoped it would, concerned for Erik, the "magnetic super weapon" which both superpowers and numerous smaller states with ambitions to the title were currently racing to find and control, or failing that, to find and destroy. His hand was up, reached out -- as quick as thought in this place, too late to undo the gesture -- and held against Erik's cheek, his thumb caressing the cheekbone, smearing the wetness there into a shimmer beneath the eye.
“Oh come here,” Charles muttered, the words escaping his lips as the concepts of something he was brought here for and something he was supposed to say faded quietly away. His hand slipped to the back of Erik's neck, tugging him down, and they were kissing like they had that last night; no, not quite. That night had been passion and fear of a different sort, whereas this was more like the nights they shared on their recruiting trip, once they'd gotten accustomed to each other, when they still had the future together to look forward to.
Erik didn't speak; he didn't have to speak, not because Charles was in his mind, feeling his words as soon as he thought them, but because Erik's body spoke for him. Desperation in the strength of his arms reaching behind Charles and holding him close, delight reflected in the quickening of breath, the relaxing of his shoulders as he found comfort in the familiarity of it all. For it was familiar, the way they fell together, the way Erik smoothed Charles' back and rested his hands in the hollow at the base of his hips, the way Charles gripped Erik's shoulders and arms, and ran his hands along the lithe musculature and sharp angles, curling his fingers to dig into the skin the way Erik so loved. The way Erik nuzzled Charles' jaw as soon as he broke the kiss for a breath of air, the moan that started deep in the back of his throat and ended in a breathy hiss when Erik licked the skin there and ended with a sharp nip, teeth to skin. When Erik had grown comfortable enough to take what he wanted, as opposed to just letting himself be taken, and Charles had felt proud of that, as well.
"You left--" Erik breathed against Charles' throat, breaking the spell, and Charles pushed him away and turned to face the bank of fog that swallowed the world beyond the curve of the hill.
"You're the one who left," he said dully, suddenly numb, save for the twist in the pit of his stomach. Erik's hands found his arms, the calloused fingers pressing against his bare skin -- ah, the sweatshirt was gone, quick as thought, and Erik's bare chest pressed against his back.
"Let me finish," he growled, but Charles heard the pleading underneath. "You left a gap in my life, Charles. I didn't understand, I never… no one…" He nuzzled the back of Charles' head, running his nose against his ear, his breath warm and his tongue so close, and then Charles was leaning back against him, because he really couldn't help it. His right hand drifted up over his shoulder to cup the base of Erik's skull, his thumb against the back of Erik's neck, holding him fast.
"You left a gap in me, too," Charles admitted, and then they stopped speaking altogether, sinking to their knees on the soft ground, the clover moist with dew. Erik's hands slid to his waist, his hips, and one hand slipped along the curve of his hip bone to curl around the base of his cock. Convenient, the sudden lack of clothes. And how easy it was for Charles to crane his neck so he could catch Erik's mouth in a kiss, hot and so hungry.
It had been weeks without word, nothing but a hint in the news of Castro's mysterious new adviser, nothing but a whisper in the mind of a secretary at Moira's office who thought she saw a doppleganger, but decided it must have been deja vu. It had been weeks of loneliness since that last night, after weeks of spending almost every night together.
Charles almost forgot that he had to say the words out loud; and then it turned out that he didn't, that Erik knew what he meant when he shifted his hips just so against Erik's stiff cock, aching for the fullness of him.
"Do you promise--" Erik asked, his hand slipping up the shaft to rub the sensitive spot just under the head, a fond gesture if ever there was one, and Charles nodded, of course, and he said it out loud, "Of course, love."
And he wouldn't dwell on that.
Erik let go and leaned back just a bit to give them room, to realign themselves kneeling together on the ground, and Charles reached back to guide him into place. When he gasped - lust never quite overcame the initial discomfort, and Erik was bloody well endowed - Erik reached a hand to his ankle, a warm comforting touch, a brief squeeze on the Achilles tendon. And then they were sliding together with a sigh, and Erik’s hands were on his hips again, running down his legs, slipping off from the sweat and then he was wrapping his arms around Charles in a tight embrace, pressing against Charles’ back and just rolling his hips in a persistent rhythm, keeping as much of their skin in contact as possible, as if he couldn’t hold him close enough.
Somewhere along the way they had leaned forward, and Charles braced himself on his arms, Erik still clinging to him so that Charles had to bear both their weight. It was oddly comforting, knowing that he could so, easily, and probably even in the waking world - or at least, he could if he weren’t being distracted. He curled his fingers into the mat of clover and the dirt underneath, torn between wanting to collapse on the earth and let Erik bring him slowly and gently to the edge and over, and wanting to break from his grasp and slam his ass against Erik to make him thrust hard and fast and as desperate as he felt. He was surprised when he felt Erik start to shake against him, and then rueful -- this must be what it is like to have sex with someone when you can’t read their mind -- and Erik was mumbling something with his face pressed against his neck.
It might have been his name.
Erik’s hand was on his cock again, stroking, he himself being spent. “Erik,” Charles said, his voice thick and ragged, “Erik--” But whatever it was he meant to say, he couldn’t; he’d turned to face Erik, and his hands were on Erik’s chest, pressing him down to the ground, and they were kissing, open mouths and the taste of Erik -- copper and saltwater, a tang of leather from some forgotten memory, a bitter aftertaste on the back of the tongue -- claiming all his attention.
His hands were on Erik’s shoulders, trying to push him down, push him away to break the kiss; Erik’s palms were on the sides of his face, his long fingertips brushing his temples, his thumbs caressing his jaw, stroking the side of his neck, unwilling to let go. Finally Charles slipped his hands to the insides of Erik’s wrists and took hold of them, guiding them down to rest against the outside of his hips. Erik’s fingers curled obligingly into the skin there, and Charles couldn’t help but smile -- I feel that -- and -- Oh how I’ve missed it. The feeling swelled inside him, threatened to choke him, and looking at Erik like that, so relaxed and open, looking up at him with so much sheer happiness and trust, mistaking Charles’ expression for having missed him, not just having missed the ability to press his hips against a lover and feel that lovers’ hands gripping his ass tightly in response, and Charles felt as if he were being sliced in two; “You left a gap in my life,” Erik’s words echoed in his memory.
“Let’s fill that gap, then,” Charles muttered quietly. He nudged Erik’s legs apart, took himself in hand and pressed into Erik with no preamble. It was cruel to do that, and he expected Erik’s gaze to harden instead of soften, expected a snarl instead of a delighted gasp. But this was as much Erik’s dream as his own, and so Erik was as ready for Charles to thrust inside him as if Charles had taken his time to prepare him. Or perhaps it did hurt -- Charles jerked forward experimentally, the image of a battering ram springing to mind unbidden -- and Erik wanted to be hurt, deserved to be hurt, as much as...
... Erik had tossed his head back, his throat arched gracefully, gasping, his arms flailed out to his side, his hands clenching into fists, and Charles’ self-disgust turned into momentary panic, until he felt one of Erik’s calves pressing firmly against his buttock. Yes, that said. More. “Really?” Charles asked, a chuckle burbling up through all that confused emotional mess writhing inside him, and Erik gave him the briefest of incredulous looks before whacking his head against the ground again and clenching his leg and shoving himself against Charles. Charles reached forward to dig his fingernails into Erik’s pectoral muscles, grinning in spite of himself. Then he slid his hands down Erik’s sides -- the man was lithe as a greyhound -- and held his hips firmly as he proceeded to kindly fuck the living daylights out of him.
He did not cry Erik’s name when he came.
It was only a whisper.
* * * * * *
3:30 am, the clock said. "Time to turn over," it meant, just as it had at 11:30 and 1:30, just as it would again at 5:30; the body must be shifted every two hours -- left, back, right, back -- or ulcers will develop and get infected, and then it's back to the hospital.
But this time, Charles felt -- well, sticky. He smiled in the dark, even though he was annoyed at needing to reach for the washcloth he kept by the bed, in case he spilled the glass of water he kept on the nightstand. Well, this is new, he thought as he spilled the water onto the cloth on purpose, so he could scrub the tell-tale pool of ejaculate away. He tugged himself into position on his right side and wiped the hair from his eyes, the roots stiffened by his sweat. But I'm not complaining.
Chapter 2...