X-Men: First Class fic - Assassination (It's Not For Everyone) 3
As if to make up for the fact that I updated so quickly after part 1, part 3 has taken me until just now to finally finish writing (without me wanting to toss the whole damn thing in the trash). Real life is a bitch, family is so inconvenient and porn is so. fucking. hard to write. Convincingly, anyway.
But anyhow! This bit is kinda dark, and as such gets its own list of warnings in addition to the ones stated in part 1: Implication of torture, implication of someone enjoying carrying out said torture, and the implication of an emotionally traumatic past. It goes without saying that if any of these make you uncomfortable you should backspace the hell out of here now. That said, considering the weirdly kinky build-up, the resulting sex is really quite vanilla. Ish.
Also, I've never read the X-Men comics, I've only seen the movies. So I know nothing about Cain Marko, except for what a quick and dirty Wikipedia session tells me, and upon finding that he's Charles' stepbrother, I immediately plotted him in for my own nefarious purposes. If I got it completely wrong, or even if I just basically crapped all over canon, feel free to shout at me for it. I won't blame you.
For the third (and possibly final) time: this one's for ascoolsuchasi for being awesome enough to ask for an assassin AU just because I was already writing one. Thank you, lovely! You can yell at me for making you wait this long if you like :)
Anyway ...
Part one, Part two.
Another fun fact about assassins: they’re completely fucking insane.
***
“You know,” the White Queen says pleasantly, sitting back in her chair and crossing one white-booted leg over the other, “this would have gone much better for you if you hadn’t burst in and tried to threaten me.”
Erik is starting to realise this, thank you very fucking much. He strains against the hold that the White Queen’s lackeys, Azazel and Riptide, have on him, but he might as well have tried to kill them with his mind for the all the good it does him.
“Now,” the White Queen goes on. “I’m going to tell my boys to let you go, but you so much as reach for one of those ridiculous knives that are obviously compensating for something, and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. Understand?” she adds sweetly, but with a poisonous edge that tells Erik she’s being deadly serious.
He nods once, and then Azazel and Riptide cautiously release him. His hands are itching for a weapon but he just clenches his fists and looks directly at the White Queen.
“You know about every contract going,” he says tightly. “I need to know which one Professor X took.”
“Professor X?” the White Queen echoes, raising an eyebrow. “Why should you care about which contracts the Professor takes?”
At that moment, Azazel leans down and whispers something in her ear. Erik watches her face change from puzzlement to disbelief to a wicked smirk that, despite Erik’s hardened resolve, sends a thrill of apprehension down his spine.
“Magneto,” she says delightedly. It’s so different from the way the Professor says it that Erik wishes even more that he had a knife in his hand. “You and the Professor? I had no idea. Have you managed to get that stupid mask off him yet?”
“It’s a work in progress,” Erik says shortly, even though he knows she only said it to fuck with him.
“Well, that’s a shame, I’m sure we’d all love to know what he looks like under there.” The White Queen stares up at him with that evil fucking grin on her face. Erik wants to cut it off her so badly.
“I’m sure you would,” he says, his voice a low curl of anger. “But you’re not going to, you manipulative bitch, because he’s mi -”
He stops himself from finishing that sentence but it’s too late. The White Queen’s eyes flash triumphantly and Erik wants to hit himself now. He always did have issues with sharing.
“Yours, is he?” the White Queen says, and her voice takes on a mocking tone. “But you don’t even know where he is.”
That’s it. Erik is so done with this bullshit.
He grabs Riptide and flings him across the room to collide with Azazel, and then before either of them can recover, he dives over the desk between him and the White Queen and wraps his hand around her throat.
She doesn’t struggle, which is maddening. He tightens his grip a fraction; he can feel the cartilage in her windpipe creak under the pressure. Her face goes red and then purple but she still does nothing except gesture at Azazel and Riptide to stand down, all without taking her eyes from Erik.
“Kill me,” she manages to choke out. “Go - on! But you’ll never - find him - without me!”
For a moment, Erik thinks that killing her would be a good trade-off, but then it hits him that she’s absolutely right, that no one else would even know where to start looking for the Professor, and he lets go of her neck and pushes her away from him in disgust.
She gasps in a breath and rubs at her throat. “Marko,” she spits at him hoarsely. “Cain Marko. That’s his next target. Now leave.”
“But,” Erik says, half to himself. “What - Marko’s second-rate, why would anyone waste their time -”
“This isn’t fucking twenty questions, Magneto!” the White Queen snarls, and now she has a white-handled revolver clutched in her hand and aimed right at him. Azazel and Riptide are circling Erik, waiting for her signal. “I gave you what you wanted, so kindly -” she squeezes the trigger, pulling the gun up at the last second so that the bullet goes slamming into the ceiling instead of Erik’s forehead “- get the hell out!”
Erik goes.
***
“The White Queen,” Angel echoes. “The White Queen.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Magneto?”
“Yeah?”
“Are. You. Insane?”
A bitter laugh.
“Well, obviously. So what else is new?”
***
Erik follows Angel’s careful instructions but ignores her, “you owe me big time, daddy-o,” and is soon creeping across Cain Marko’s front lawn.
There’s only one light on, shining through a downstairs window and illuminating the night. Erik finds this incredibly ominous but doesn’t stop moving forward. He unpicks the lock on the front door in a matter of seconds and then he’s running silently through the house until he comes to the right room.
Marko is laid out on the floor, wrists and ankles tied together, gag over his mouth. His face is bloody and bruised and he’s moaning piteously through the gag. One of his eyes has swollen shut, and there’s a wound in the side of his head that looks just like the butt of a gun.
The Professor is standing over him, breathing heavily. He’s not wearing gloves and his hands are bright with blood and curled around his gun like it’s a lifeline. He’s shaking and wild-eyed, and there is hatred and fury in every line of his body as he looks down at Marko.
He’s the most beautiful thing Erik has ever seen.
You know. Except for that mask, because wow, that is one ugly piece of shit.
“So I’m guessing now’s not a good time?”
Erik keeps his voice light and casual, not because he’s worried the Professor might shoot Marko - it’s what he’s here to do, he accepted the contract, Erik’s not going to get in the way of that - but because the Professor might shoot him.
“You could say that,” the Professor says, his voice brittle. “What are you doing here, Magneto?”
“I seem to recall we had a date, Professor,” Erik says pointedly. “Of course, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but,” he gestures around at the room, “I’m sure we could work something out.”
The Professor doesn’t say anything, he just keeps staring down at Marko like he’s having a hard time deciding what to do next.
“Of course, I can see you’re busy,” Erik goes on conversationally, taking a seat and making sure to keep both of them in his sight-line.
“Yes,” the Professor says shortly. “I have some … trash to take out.”
That was, Erik thinks wryly, the worst fucking one-liner in the history of ever.
“Sorry,” the Professor says after a pause. “That was terrible.”
“Yep,” Erik agrees.
“I can do better, you know.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“But not right now.”
“No.”
The longer the silence goes on, the less intimidated Marko seems to be. He rolls himself into a vaguely upright position and glares at the Professor with his good eye. Erik has the fleeting desire to rip it out but quashes it reluctantly. This is the Professor’s show, all Erik can do is make sure he gets a good seat.
“Why him?” he asks eventually, because he’s genuinely curious. “He’s - nothing. He’s barely even worth the bullet.”
Marko lets out a muffled shout in which the words ‘fuck you’ are very much perceptible, and a word that Erik doesn’t recognise, but which, judging by the way the Professor tenses up, might just be the Professor’s name.
His real name.
Erik’s not going to lie; he’s jealous as fuck that this asshole knows the Professor’s actual name while he doesn’t, but he’s still curious.
“He’s my stepbrother,” the Professor bursts out suddenly, and if it could, Erik’s entire head would have exploded just then.
“Your - ?”
“Stepbrother, yes,” the Professor says impatiently. “His father married my mother when I was ten.”
“And …?” Erik says, because that just can’t be the whole story. There’s a black little suspicion building up in the back of his mind about what the rest of the story might be though.
“And nothing!” the Professor snaps, and the panic and fury in his eyes confirms exactly what Erik is thinking.
“Professor,” he says quietly. “What did he do to you?”
The Professor lets out one of those terrible, mad laughs. “What did he do to me?” he repeats shrilly. “That is not a nice story, Magneto, not nice at all. You sure you want to know?”
“Yes. Tell me.”
The Professor tells him.
***
There is a long and deafening silence when the Professor stops talking. He sags slightly, as though exhausted, and Erik wonders how long he’s been keeping this dark and disgusting secret to himself. How long he’s been made to keep it.
The anger boils up in Erik’s stomach - anger at the world for letting something like this happen, anger at himself for asking the Professor to relive it, anger at the Professor’s mother, a woman he has never met and who’s long dead by now anyway; hell, even anger at the Professor for never saying a word to anyone. But most of all, he’s furious at Marko for doing it, for getting away with it, and for sitting there without any kind of remorse for what he’s done.
Erik wants to tear him to pieces. He wants to rip shreds off him, inch by inch, break every bone in his body, set his nerves alight with excruciating pain - then put him back together so he can do it all again. And again. And again …
But.
But it’s the Professor’s show. And Erik won’t deny him the satisfaction of doing all that himself.
“I see,” Erik says slowly.
“Do you?” the Professor hurls back. He aims his gun at the nearest wall, lets off a volley of shots, and then swings around again and presses the now white-hot muzzle to Marko’s forehead.
The screams that follow make both the Professor and Erik shudder, only partly in distaste.
Erik makes a decision and stands up. He pulls out a knife - his favourite, if he’s going to be honest - and hands it, handle forward, to the Professor.
“Take it,” he says, so quietly it’s barely more than a breath. “Do anything - do everything to him. Everything you’ve ever thought of.”
“I,” the Professor whispers. “I can’t, I -”
“Yes you can. You want to.”
“Yes,” the Professor half moans. “God, yes.”
“Then do it,” Erik says, pressing the knife handle into his hand and holding onto both just a little too long. “I won’t stop you. I won’t interrupt. He’s all yours.”
“Fuck,” the Professor says, and then he’s kissing Erik so hard he can’t breathe or think but that just makes it better somehow. The Professor’s mask is digging painfully into the bridge of his nose, but even that feels good right now, and the tang of copper as the Professor bites at his mouth is just beautiful.
“Have a seat,” the Professor says, as he pulls away, panting. He flashes Erik a grin that Erik thinks is gorgeous but is probably really fucking scary and adds, “I want you to watch.”
His eyes are glinting with a bright, crazy malice as he drags Marko up by the hair, and Erik finds his seat without taking his eyes off them, his mouth dry, his heart in his throat, and painfully hard because -
Because if the Professor is beautiful with a gun, he’s fucking magnificent with a knife.
***
It starts in the car, on the driveway of the mansion.
Well. Not exactly. Really, it started nearly three weeks ago when the Professor had flirted with him shamelessly over a cooling corpse. But for all intents and purposes, it starts here, now, when the Professor kills the engine and then looks down to where his he’s clutching Erik’s hand hard enough to bruise and Erik’s holding back just as tightly.
(They’d held hands all the way back to the mansion, in a way that said quite clearly they were in desperate need of something to hang on to, for everyone’s benefit).
“Do you … want to talk about it?” Erik says hesitantly, because he knows a hundred and one ways to make someone talk but this is the only time he’s ever hoped he doesn’t get an answer.
“No,” the Professor murmurs. “Hell no. I don’t even want to think about it again, so talking about it? No, absolutely not.”
“Okay,” Erik says, and the Professor lets out a breath.
“One thing I would like to know, though,” he says. “How did you even find me? I know I didn’t leave a trail behind, so how -?”
“The White Queen,” Erik admits, and watches with raised eyebrows as the Professor smacks himself in the forehead in realisation.
“Of course,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Everything gets back to her, of course she’d know. But she’s not exactly known for her hospitality, how did you even convince her to tell you about … the contract?”
The careful omission of Marko’s name is just one of many things about the man that makes Erik wish they hadn’t ripped him apart already, because he’d really like to go to town on the bastard for leaving such a visible mark on the Professor.
So his grin is a little too sharp and his voice a little too harsh when he says, “She just needed a little persuasion.”
“Oh, god. What did you do to her?” the Professor asks in a hushed voice. His nails dig into the back of Erik’s hand and Erik’s breath hitches at the flare of pain as he tells the Professor everything that happened with the White Queen.
“- I could feel her pulse, I could feel her spine, Professor, it was - it was -” he finishes in an exultant whisper, and the Professor shudders in the seat beside him and turns hot, blue eyes on him and says, “Get out.”
Confused, Erik says, “What -” but the Professor interrupts him.
“The car,” he snaps. “Get out of the car, Magneto.”
“But why -”
The Professor pushes at his shoulder frantically. “Because,” he hisses, “in about thirty seconds we’re going to fuck each other stupid, but we’re not going to make it to a bed, and there just isn’t enough room in this car for what I had in mind. So get out. Of the damn. Car.”
Erik gets out of the car so fast he almost breaks the sound barrier.
***
The Professor’s right.
They don’t make it to a bed.
They barely even make it through the front door.
***
They stumble their way to the stairs, Erik’s hand fisted in the Professor’s hair and the Professor trying and failing to get them both out of their clothes. There’s a moment where they almost topple backwards but the Professor manages to steady them and then drags Erik down to the ground anyway.
Erik curls one hand around the Professor’s neck while the other goes to work on the buttons of the Professor’s shirt, and he presses open-mouthed kisses to the Professor’s throat in between buttons until the Professor distracts him with his mouth and then he just tears the shirt open.
Buttons ping off in all different directions as he goes to kiss the Professor again, but he’s impeded by the mask and he clutches at the Professor’s shoulders and growls, “I’m going to rip that fucking thing off you if you don’t -” and then he breaks off as the Professor reaches up and does it for him.
“I thought you’d never bloody ask,” the Professor gasps, throwing the mask aside, and then Erik finally gets a look at him.
He’s - pretty, is the first word that comes to Erik’s mind, and he is, all flushed cheeks and bright eyes and kiss-bruised lips, but close on the heels of that thought is the word perfection and Erik makes a low, punched-out sound and kisses every inch of him he can reach.
“Magneto,” the Professor says, and Erik breathes, “It’s Erik, call me -” and he’s on the verge of saying, actually, you can call me whatever the hell you want, when the Professor laughs delightedly and says, “Erik,” in what is possibly the sexiest way anyone’s ever said his name and Erik’s whole body lights up.
“Shit,” he says, with feeling. “Say it - say it again.”
“Erik,” the Professor repeats, and then, “Will you get your damn pants off, god, do I have to do everything -”
“Tell me your name and I’ll fuck you through the floor,” Erik promises, grabbing the Professor’s hand before it can reach his belt.
There’s a hot, tight silence, and then the Professor bursts out with, “It’s Charles, Charles Xavier, and don’t you dare laugh or so help me I will -”
“Charles,” Erik says, testing it out. He kind of doesn’t want to say anything else now.
“- oh,” the Prof - Charles says, cutting off his own rant. “That’s.” He swallows. “That’s actually really fucking sexy, god, say it again.”
Erik does, and then Charles is kicking off his shoes and tearing at the front of his pants and struggling out of them and the boxers underneath, and Erik shoves his way between his legs and wraps his hand around Charles’ cock. Charles goes absolutely still under him for a second and then grabs Erik by the hair and kisses him messily, panting out, “God, Erik, you, yes,” and throws his head back, not even seeming to notice when it thuds against the stairs.
He makes an absolutely filthy picture, writhing against the stairs with his shirt hanging open and his legs spread wide, and as much as Erik is enjoying the view, he just really, really wants to fuck Charles until neither of them can walk, so he takes his hand away, and presses two fingers against Charles’ mouth when he groans his disappointment.
“No lube,” he explains, when Charles falls silent and stares at him. “Have to do this the old fashioned way.”
“What -” Charles begins, chest heaving, but Erik pushes in gently and he stops talking and sucks on Erik’s fingers instead.
“Oh, fuck, fuck,” Erik says, as Charles’ tongue does impossibly dirty things to his fingertips, and Erik imagines what it would feel like on his cock and has to take his hand away before he comes in his pants.
Charles is grinning smugly as Erik kisses his way down his chest, but it disappears when Erik licks at a nipple and then bites it, and becomes a hoarse whimper when Erik just keeps moving south and folds Charles’ right leg to his body, all while avoiding his cock.
“What are you -” Charles starts, lifting himself up on his elbows, but then Erik bends his head and does something that makes him squeak and then let out a long moan. “Oh. Oh. You - you’re -” He can’t seem to get his words out.
“Told you,” Erik says, lifting his head and murmuring the words into the back of Charles’ thigh. “Old fashioned way.”
And then before Charles can say anything else Erik lowers his mouth again and slides his still-wet fingers in alongside his tongue, and Charles’ makes no sound at all but his eyes are squeezed closed and his mouth is hanging open and he’s dragging in shallow, ragged breaths.
Erik lets up a little bit and, because it’s there and because he’s been thinking about doing this for-fucking-ever, he licks a long, sloppy stripe along the underside of Charles’ cock in counterpoint to the rhythm of his fingers, and Charles’ hand finds his shoulder and grips it so tight Erik winces, but doesn’t stop. Charles shifts his hips restlessly, like he can’t decide whether he wants to push back on Erik’s fingers or fuck his mouth, and then he makes a noise like the indecision is killing him but that it would probably an awesome death.
And when Charles is good and wet and stretched, Erik fumbles one-handed at his zipper and manages to push his pants down to mid-thigh. Then he grabs Charles by the hips, and Charles locks his legs around Erik’s waist, and he lines up, the head of his cock pressing against Charles’ entrance, and then Charles is saying, “Wait, wait, you forgot -” and while Erik is briefly panicking, Charles spits into his hand with surprising delicacy.
And then he gets the hand between their bodies and curls it around Erik’s cock and spreads the saliva around, while Erik’s eyes flutter shut and he can’t stop the desperate groan that leaves his mouth.
“We need to have a talk about the level of mutual touching in this relationship,” Charles says, watching Erik’s face like he never wants to look away. “But that’s for later. Right now you need to stop pissing around and just fuck me already.”
Erik drops his head onto Charles’ shoulder and huffs out a laugh. “You are ridiculous,” he says, into Charles’ neck. “No one should sound this irritated in the middle of sex.”
“If we hadn’t stopped in the middle, maybe I wouldn’t sound so irritated,” Charles says, removing his hand, and, well, Erik supposes that’s fair.
“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Erik says, grinning despite himself, and he wraps his hands around Charles’s hips again and pushes.
White noise drowns out whatever reply Charles might have had, and Erik sucks in a deep breath and tries to get past the immediate feelings of hot tight tight fuck hot perfect because he’s going to come otherwise.
Charles makes a high-pitched, shocked noise and Erik manages to ask, “Hurts?”
“Yes,” Charles gasps. “But - it’s good, it’s so good, Erik - don’t you dare -”
Erik pulls out and slams back in, and Charles makes that noise again, and Erik reaches up to pin Charles’ hands to the stairs, but Charles laces their fingers together and arches against him so that Erik drives in deeper, Charles’ heel digging into the small of his back to urge him on.
Charles is making these lovely, breathy little moans as Erik fucks into him, and his cock keeps brushing Erik’s stomach, leaving damp, slick trails behind, which sort of breaks Erik’s brain in the best way. He’s beyond any kind of coherency right now, but Erik knows he never wants this to end, he wants to break Charles open and carve his name on every cell of Charles’ body, and he wants to do it forever, or at the very least, for the rest of their lives.
He’s unaware that he’s saying most of this out loud until Charles makes a weird kind of hiccup and half-sobs, “Yes, anything, god, Erik, you -” and comes, hot and sticky between them. Erik is hit by a wave of pleasure that feels like a punch to the gut and shoves into Charles a few more times, and he manages to gasp out warningly, “I’m -” and then, “Charles,” and then Erik completely falls apart.
It’s a few seconds before he becomes aware of anything that isn’t the result of what might just be the best orgasm of his life, and then he realises he’s basically a dead weight on top of Charles and he pulls out, both of them hissing a little at the drag of skin. Then he rolls over so he and Charles are lying side by side on the stairs, panting and staring at the ceiling.
There’s a brief silence and then Charles says, thoughtfully, “The stairs were probably a bad idea.”
“The stairs were a fucking brilliant idea,” Erik disagrees weakly, because it's true, but he just can’t seem to get his breath back enough to make a more convincing argument.
“Yes, well, you’re not the one with friction burns on your arse, are you?” Strangely, Charles doesn’t seem particularly bothered about this.
“Let me see,” Erik says, rolling him over and running his fingers over the red, slightly raised skin on Charles’ ass. Charles shivers and curls an arm around Erik’s neck.
“Really?” Erik says, incredulous.
“Apparently,” Charles murmurs into Erik’s collarbone.
“Okay,” Erik says, reluctantly pulling away and standing up on unsteady legs. “Come on,” he adds, holding a hand out to Charles, who takes it and pulls himself up.
They climb the stairs, shedding what little clothing they hadn’t yet managed to get rid of, and stopping every now and then to make out like teenagers.
After all, they’re both intelligent men. It’s going to take some time for them to fuck each other stupid.
Epilogue
But anyhow! This bit is kinda dark, and as such gets its own list of warnings in addition to the ones stated in part 1: Implication of torture, implication of someone enjoying carrying out said torture, and the implication of an emotionally traumatic past. It goes without saying that if any of these make you uncomfortable you should backspace the hell out of here now. That said, considering the weirdly kinky build-up, the resulting sex is really quite vanilla. Ish.
Also, I've never read the X-Men comics, I've only seen the movies. So I know nothing about Cain Marko, except for what a quick and dirty Wikipedia session tells me, and upon finding that he's Charles' stepbrother, I immediately plotted him in for my own nefarious purposes. If I got it completely wrong, or even if I just basically crapped all over canon, feel free to shout at me for it. I won't blame you.
For the third (and possibly final) time: this one's for ascoolsuchasi for being awesome enough to ask for an assassin AU just because I was already writing one. Thank you, lovely! You can yell at me for making you wait this long if you like :)
Anyway ...
Part one, Part two.
Another fun fact about assassins: they’re completely fucking insane.
***
“You know,” the White Queen says pleasantly, sitting back in her chair and crossing one white-booted leg over the other, “this would have gone much better for you if you hadn’t burst in and tried to threaten me.”
Erik is starting to realise this, thank you very fucking much. He strains against the hold that the White Queen’s lackeys, Azazel and Riptide, have on him, but he might as well have tried to kill them with his mind for the all the good it does him.
“Now,” the White Queen goes on. “I’m going to tell my boys to let you go, but you so much as reach for one of those ridiculous knives that are obviously compensating for something, and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground. Understand?” she adds sweetly, but with a poisonous edge that tells Erik she’s being deadly serious.
He nods once, and then Azazel and Riptide cautiously release him. His hands are itching for a weapon but he just clenches his fists and looks directly at the White Queen.
“You know about every contract going,” he says tightly. “I need to know which one Professor X took.”
“Professor X?” the White Queen echoes, raising an eyebrow. “Why should you care about which contracts the Professor takes?”
At that moment, Azazel leans down and whispers something in her ear. Erik watches her face change from puzzlement to disbelief to a wicked smirk that, despite Erik’s hardened resolve, sends a thrill of apprehension down his spine.
“Magneto,” she says delightedly. It’s so different from the way the Professor says it that Erik wishes even more that he had a knife in his hand. “You and the Professor? I had no idea. Have you managed to get that stupid mask off him yet?”
“It’s a work in progress,” Erik says shortly, even though he knows she only said it to fuck with him.
“Well, that’s a shame, I’m sure we’d all love to know what he looks like under there.” The White Queen stares up at him with that evil fucking grin on her face. Erik wants to cut it off her so badly.
“I’m sure you would,” he says, his voice a low curl of anger. “But you’re not going to, you manipulative bitch, because he’s mi -”
He stops himself from finishing that sentence but it’s too late. The White Queen’s eyes flash triumphantly and Erik wants to hit himself now. He always did have issues with sharing.
“Yours, is he?” the White Queen says, and her voice takes on a mocking tone. “But you don’t even know where he is.”
That’s it. Erik is so done with this bullshit.
He grabs Riptide and flings him across the room to collide with Azazel, and then before either of them can recover, he dives over the desk between him and the White Queen and wraps his hand around her throat.
She doesn’t struggle, which is maddening. He tightens his grip a fraction; he can feel the cartilage in her windpipe creak under the pressure. Her face goes red and then purple but she still does nothing except gesture at Azazel and Riptide to stand down, all without taking her eyes from Erik.
“Kill me,” she manages to choke out. “Go - on! But you’ll never - find him - without me!”
For a moment, Erik thinks that killing her would be a good trade-off, but then it hits him that she’s absolutely right, that no one else would even know where to start looking for the Professor, and he lets go of her neck and pushes her away from him in disgust.
She gasps in a breath and rubs at her throat. “Marko,” she spits at him hoarsely. “Cain Marko. That’s his next target. Now leave.”
“But,” Erik says, half to himself. “What - Marko’s second-rate, why would anyone waste their time -”
“This isn’t fucking twenty questions, Magneto!” the White Queen snarls, and now she has a white-handled revolver clutched in her hand and aimed right at him. Azazel and Riptide are circling Erik, waiting for her signal. “I gave you what you wanted, so kindly -” she squeezes the trigger, pulling the gun up at the last second so that the bullet goes slamming into the ceiling instead of Erik’s forehead “- get the hell out!”
Erik goes.
***
“The White Queen,” Angel echoes. “The White Queen.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Magneto?”
“Yeah?”
“Are. You. Insane?”
A bitter laugh.
“Well, obviously. So what else is new?”
***
Erik follows Angel’s careful instructions but ignores her, “you owe me big time, daddy-o,” and is soon creeping across Cain Marko’s front lawn.
There’s only one light on, shining through a downstairs window and illuminating the night. Erik finds this incredibly ominous but doesn’t stop moving forward. He unpicks the lock on the front door in a matter of seconds and then he’s running silently through the house until he comes to the right room.
Marko is laid out on the floor, wrists and ankles tied together, gag over his mouth. His face is bloody and bruised and he’s moaning piteously through the gag. One of his eyes has swollen shut, and there’s a wound in the side of his head that looks just like the butt of a gun.
The Professor is standing over him, breathing heavily. He’s not wearing gloves and his hands are bright with blood and curled around his gun like it’s a lifeline. He’s shaking and wild-eyed, and there is hatred and fury in every line of his body as he looks down at Marko.
He’s the most beautiful thing Erik has ever seen.
You know. Except for that mask, because wow, that is one ugly piece of shit.
“So I’m guessing now’s not a good time?”
Erik keeps his voice light and casual, not because he’s worried the Professor might shoot Marko - it’s what he’s here to do, he accepted the contract, Erik’s not going to get in the way of that - but because the Professor might shoot him.
“You could say that,” the Professor says, his voice brittle. “What are you doing here, Magneto?”
“I seem to recall we had a date, Professor,” Erik says pointedly. “Of course, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but,” he gestures around at the room, “I’m sure we could work something out.”
The Professor doesn’t say anything, he just keeps staring down at Marko like he’s having a hard time deciding what to do next.
“Of course, I can see you’re busy,” Erik goes on conversationally, taking a seat and making sure to keep both of them in his sight-line.
“Yes,” the Professor says shortly. “I have some … trash to take out.”
That was, Erik thinks wryly, the worst fucking one-liner in the history of ever.
“Sorry,” the Professor says after a pause. “That was terrible.”
“Yep,” Erik agrees.
“I can do better, you know.”
“I’m sure you can.”
“But not right now.”
“No.”
The longer the silence goes on, the less intimidated Marko seems to be. He rolls himself into a vaguely upright position and glares at the Professor with his good eye. Erik has the fleeting desire to rip it out but quashes it reluctantly. This is the Professor’s show, all Erik can do is make sure he gets a good seat.
“Why him?” he asks eventually, because he’s genuinely curious. “He’s - nothing. He’s barely even worth the bullet.”
Marko lets out a muffled shout in which the words ‘fuck you’ are very much perceptible, and a word that Erik doesn’t recognise, but which, judging by the way the Professor tenses up, might just be the Professor’s name.
His real name.
Erik’s not going to lie; he’s jealous as fuck that this asshole knows the Professor’s actual name while he doesn’t, but he’s still curious.
“He’s my stepbrother,” the Professor bursts out suddenly, and if it could, Erik’s entire head would have exploded just then.
“Your - ?”
“Stepbrother, yes,” the Professor says impatiently. “His father married my mother when I was ten.”
“And …?” Erik says, because that just can’t be the whole story. There’s a black little suspicion building up in the back of his mind about what the rest of the story might be though.
“And nothing!” the Professor snaps, and the panic and fury in his eyes confirms exactly what Erik is thinking.
“Professor,” he says quietly. “What did he do to you?”
The Professor lets out one of those terrible, mad laughs. “What did he do to me?” he repeats shrilly. “That is not a nice story, Magneto, not nice at all. You sure you want to know?”
“Yes. Tell me.”
The Professor tells him.
***
There is a long and deafening silence when the Professor stops talking. He sags slightly, as though exhausted, and Erik wonders how long he’s been keeping this dark and disgusting secret to himself. How long he’s been made to keep it.
The anger boils up in Erik’s stomach - anger at the world for letting something like this happen, anger at himself for asking the Professor to relive it, anger at the Professor’s mother, a woman he has never met and who’s long dead by now anyway; hell, even anger at the Professor for never saying a word to anyone. But most of all, he’s furious at Marko for doing it, for getting away with it, and for sitting there without any kind of remorse for what he’s done.
Erik wants to tear him to pieces. He wants to rip shreds off him, inch by inch, break every bone in his body, set his nerves alight with excruciating pain - then put him back together so he can do it all again. And again. And again …
But.
But it’s the Professor’s show. And Erik won’t deny him the satisfaction of doing all that himself.
“I see,” Erik says slowly.
“Do you?” the Professor hurls back. He aims his gun at the nearest wall, lets off a volley of shots, and then swings around again and presses the now white-hot muzzle to Marko’s forehead.
The screams that follow make both the Professor and Erik shudder, only partly in distaste.
Erik makes a decision and stands up. He pulls out a knife - his favourite, if he’s going to be honest - and hands it, handle forward, to the Professor.
“Take it,” he says, so quietly it’s barely more than a breath. “Do anything - do everything to him. Everything you’ve ever thought of.”
“I,” the Professor whispers. “I can’t, I -”
“Yes you can. You want to.”
“Yes,” the Professor half moans. “God, yes.”
“Then do it,” Erik says, pressing the knife handle into his hand and holding onto both just a little too long. “I won’t stop you. I won’t interrupt. He’s all yours.”
“Fuck,” the Professor says, and then he’s kissing Erik so hard he can’t breathe or think but that just makes it better somehow. The Professor’s mask is digging painfully into the bridge of his nose, but even that feels good right now, and the tang of copper as the Professor bites at his mouth is just beautiful.
“Have a seat,” the Professor says, as he pulls away, panting. He flashes Erik a grin that Erik thinks is gorgeous but is probably really fucking scary and adds, “I want you to watch.”
His eyes are glinting with a bright, crazy malice as he drags Marko up by the hair, and Erik finds his seat without taking his eyes off them, his mouth dry, his heart in his throat, and painfully hard because -
Because if the Professor is beautiful with a gun, he’s fucking magnificent with a knife.
***
It starts in the car, on the driveway of the mansion.
Well. Not exactly. Really, it started nearly three weeks ago when the Professor had flirted with him shamelessly over a cooling corpse. But for all intents and purposes, it starts here, now, when the Professor kills the engine and then looks down to where his he’s clutching Erik’s hand hard enough to bruise and Erik’s holding back just as tightly.
(They’d held hands all the way back to the mansion, in a way that said quite clearly they were in desperate need of something to hang on to, for everyone’s benefit).
“Do you … want to talk about it?” Erik says hesitantly, because he knows a hundred and one ways to make someone talk but this is the only time he’s ever hoped he doesn’t get an answer.
“No,” the Professor murmurs. “Hell no. I don’t even want to think about it again, so talking about it? No, absolutely not.”
“Okay,” Erik says, and the Professor lets out a breath.
“One thing I would like to know, though,” he says. “How did you even find me? I know I didn’t leave a trail behind, so how -?”
“The White Queen,” Erik admits, and watches with raised eyebrows as the Professor smacks himself in the forehead in realisation.
“Of course,” he sighs, shaking his head. “Everything gets back to her, of course she’d know. But she’s not exactly known for her hospitality, how did you even convince her to tell you about … the contract?”
The careful omission of Marko’s name is just one of many things about the man that makes Erik wish they hadn’t ripped him apart already, because he’d really like to go to town on the bastard for leaving such a visible mark on the Professor.
So his grin is a little too sharp and his voice a little too harsh when he says, “She just needed a little persuasion.”
“Oh, god. What did you do to her?” the Professor asks in a hushed voice. His nails dig into the back of Erik’s hand and Erik’s breath hitches at the flare of pain as he tells the Professor everything that happened with the White Queen.
“- I could feel her pulse, I could feel her spine, Professor, it was - it was -” he finishes in an exultant whisper, and the Professor shudders in the seat beside him and turns hot, blue eyes on him and says, “Get out.”
Confused, Erik says, “What -” but the Professor interrupts him.
“The car,” he snaps. “Get out of the car, Magneto.”
“But why -”
The Professor pushes at his shoulder frantically. “Because,” he hisses, “in about thirty seconds we’re going to fuck each other stupid, but we’re not going to make it to a bed, and there just isn’t enough room in this car for what I had in mind. So get out. Of the damn. Car.”
Erik gets out of the car so fast he almost breaks the sound barrier.
***
The Professor’s right.
They don’t make it to a bed.
They barely even make it through the front door.
***
They stumble their way to the stairs, Erik’s hand fisted in the Professor’s hair and the Professor trying and failing to get them both out of their clothes. There’s a moment where they almost topple backwards but the Professor manages to steady them and then drags Erik down to the ground anyway.
Erik curls one hand around the Professor’s neck while the other goes to work on the buttons of the Professor’s shirt, and he presses open-mouthed kisses to the Professor’s throat in between buttons until the Professor distracts him with his mouth and then he just tears the shirt open.
Buttons ping off in all different directions as he goes to kiss the Professor again, but he’s impeded by the mask and he clutches at the Professor’s shoulders and growls, “I’m going to rip that fucking thing off you if you don’t -” and then he breaks off as the Professor reaches up and does it for him.
“I thought you’d never bloody ask,” the Professor gasps, throwing the mask aside, and then Erik finally gets a look at him.
He’s - pretty, is the first word that comes to Erik’s mind, and he is, all flushed cheeks and bright eyes and kiss-bruised lips, but close on the heels of that thought is the word perfection and Erik makes a low, punched-out sound and kisses every inch of him he can reach.
“Magneto,” the Professor says, and Erik breathes, “It’s Erik, call me -” and he’s on the verge of saying, actually, you can call me whatever the hell you want, when the Professor laughs delightedly and says, “Erik,” in what is possibly the sexiest way anyone’s ever said his name and Erik’s whole body lights up.
“Shit,” he says, with feeling. “Say it - say it again.”
“Erik,” the Professor repeats, and then, “Will you get your damn pants off, god, do I have to do everything -”
“Tell me your name and I’ll fuck you through the floor,” Erik promises, grabbing the Professor’s hand before it can reach his belt.
There’s a hot, tight silence, and then the Professor bursts out with, “It’s Charles, Charles Xavier, and don’t you dare laugh or so help me I will -”
“Charles,” Erik says, testing it out. He kind of doesn’t want to say anything else now.
“- oh,” the Prof - Charles says, cutting off his own rant. “That’s.” He swallows. “That’s actually really fucking sexy, god, say it again.”
Erik does, and then Charles is kicking off his shoes and tearing at the front of his pants and struggling out of them and the boxers underneath, and Erik shoves his way between his legs and wraps his hand around Charles’ cock. Charles goes absolutely still under him for a second and then grabs Erik by the hair and kisses him messily, panting out, “God, Erik, you, yes,” and throws his head back, not even seeming to notice when it thuds against the stairs.
He makes an absolutely filthy picture, writhing against the stairs with his shirt hanging open and his legs spread wide, and as much as Erik is enjoying the view, he just really, really wants to fuck Charles until neither of them can walk, so he takes his hand away, and presses two fingers against Charles’ mouth when he groans his disappointment.
“No lube,” he explains, when Charles falls silent and stares at him. “Have to do this the old fashioned way.”
“What -” Charles begins, chest heaving, but Erik pushes in gently and he stops talking and sucks on Erik’s fingers instead.
“Oh, fuck, fuck,” Erik says, as Charles’ tongue does impossibly dirty things to his fingertips, and Erik imagines what it would feel like on his cock and has to take his hand away before he comes in his pants.
Charles is grinning smugly as Erik kisses his way down his chest, but it disappears when Erik licks at a nipple and then bites it, and becomes a hoarse whimper when Erik just keeps moving south and folds Charles’ right leg to his body, all while avoiding his cock.
“What are you -” Charles starts, lifting himself up on his elbows, but then Erik bends his head and does something that makes him squeak and then let out a long moan. “Oh. Oh. You - you’re -” He can’t seem to get his words out.
“Told you,” Erik says, lifting his head and murmuring the words into the back of Charles’ thigh. “Old fashioned way.”
And then before Charles can say anything else Erik lowers his mouth again and slides his still-wet fingers in alongside his tongue, and Charles’ makes no sound at all but his eyes are squeezed closed and his mouth is hanging open and he’s dragging in shallow, ragged breaths.
Erik lets up a little bit and, because it’s there and because he’s been thinking about doing this for-fucking-ever, he licks a long, sloppy stripe along the underside of Charles’ cock in counterpoint to the rhythm of his fingers, and Charles’ hand finds his shoulder and grips it so tight Erik winces, but doesn’t stop. Charles shifts his hips restlessly, like he can’t decide whether he wants to push back on Erik’s fingers or fuck his mouth, and then he makes a noise like the indecision is killing him but that it would probably an awesome death.
And when Charles is good and wet and stretched, Erik fumbles one-handed at his zipper and manages to push his pants down to mid-thigh. Then he grabs Charles by the hips, and Charles locks his legs around Erik’s waist, and he lines up, the head of his cock pressing against Charles’ entrance, and then Charles is saying, “Wait, wait, you forgot -” and while Erik is briefly panicking, Charles spits into his hand with surprising delicacy.
And then he gets the hand between their bodies and curls it around Erik’s cock and spreads the saliva around, while Erik’s eyes flutter shut and he can’t stop the desperate groan that leaves his mouth.
“We need to have a talk about the level of mutual touching in this relationship,” Charles says, watching Erik’s face like he never wants to look away. “But that’s for later. Right now you need to stop pissing around and just fuck me already.”
Erik drops his head onto Charles’ shoulder and huffs out a laugh. “You are ridiculous,” he says, into Charles’ neck. “No one should sound this irritated in the middle of sex.”
“If we hadn’t stopped in the middle, maybe I wouldn’t sound so irritated,” Charles says, removing his hand, and, well, Erik supposes that’s fair.
“Okay, okay, Jesus,” Erik says, grinning despite himself, and he wraps his hands around Charles’s hips again and pushes.
White noise drowns out whatever reply Charles might have had, and Erik sucks in a deep breath and tries to get past the immediate feelings of hot tight tight fuck hot perfect because he’s going to come otherwise.
Charles makes a high-pitched, shocked noise and Erik manages to ask, “Hurts?”
“Yes,” Charles gasps. “But - it’s good, it’s so good, Erik - don’t you dare -”
Erik pulls out and slams back in, and Charles makes that noise again, and Erik reaches up to pin Charles’ hands to the stairs, but Charles laces their fingers together and arches against him so that Erik drives in deeper, Charles’ heel digging into the small of his back to urge him on.
Charles is making these lovely, breathy little moans as Erik fucks into him, and his cock keeps brushing Erik’s stomach, leaving damp, slick trails behind, which sort of breaks Erik’s brain in the best way. He’s beyond any kind of coherency right now, but Erik knows he never wants this to end, he wants to break Charles open and carve his name on every cell of Charles’ body, and he wants to do it forever, or at the very least, for the rest of their lives.
He’s unaware that he’s saying most of this out loud until Charles makes a weird kind of hiccup and half-sobs, “Yes, anything, god, Erik, you -” and comes, hot and sticky between them. Erik is hit by a wave of pleasure that feels like a punch to the gut and shoves into Charles a few more times, and he manages to gasp out warningly, “I’m -” and then, “Charles,” and then Erik completely falls apart.
It’s a few seconds before he becomes aware of anything that isn’t the result of what might just be the best orgasm of his life, and then he realises he’s basically a dead weight on top of Charles and he pulls out, both of them hissing a little at the drag of skin. Then he rolls over so he and Charles are lying side by side on the stairs, panting and staring at the ceiling.
There’s a brief silence and then Charles says, thoughtfully, “The stairs were probably a bad idea.”
“The stairs were a fucking brilliant idea,” Erik disagrees weakly, because it's true, but he just can’t seem to get his breath back enough to make a more convincing argument.
“Yes, well, you’re not the one with friction burns on your arse, are you?” Strangely, Charles doesn’t seem particularly bothered about this.
“Let me see,” Erik says, rolling him over and running his fingers over the red, slightly raised skin on Charles’ ass. Charles shivers and curls an arm around Erik’s neck.
“Really?” Erik says, incredulous.
“Apparently,” Charles murmurs into Erik’s collarbone.
“Okay,” Erik says, reluctantly pulling away and standing up on unsteady legs. “Come on,” he adds, holding a hand out to Charles, who takes it and pulls himself up.
They climb the stairs, shedding what little clothing they hadn’t yet managed to get rid of, and stopping every now and then to make out like teenagers.
After all, they’re both intelligent men. It’s going to take some time for them to fuck each other stupid.
Epilogue