Amour in the Time of Armed Robbery 2/5
Part One: http://trop-dangereuse.livejournal.com/572.html
At the clicking sound of the gun, Erik’s brain switched instantaneously into killing mode. His thoughts were sharp, icy clear, and deadly calm. He raised his hands into the air, and sidled around to face the new player in this game. Without any input from his conscious mind, he angled his body in front of Charles.
Erik couldn’t help the wicked grin from spreading across his face. His mentor, Sebastian Shaw, had told Erik he could always tell how many people were going to die directly in proportion to how many teeth Erik was showing at any given time. Erik had known he was absolutely wrong. That was the reason Erik had made sure to take Shaw out up-close, intimately with his own hands, so Shaw would see each shiny incisor, and realize it wasn’t how many people were going to meet Erik’s bullet, but just how very badly Erik wished to introduce them to death.
Erik hadn’t shown this many teeth since Shaw.
“No worries. Look, my hands are up,” he purred. He wriggled his hands side to side as if to show them off.
“ Get down!” The guy with the gun shouted. He took a few steps forward and angrily gestured with his gun. Erik mentally measured him up. Six four, thin legs but overdeveloped upper body, weight correctly distributed on the back foot but weak left knee and nasty temper. He didn’t wave the gun around to gesture along with his speech, though, somewhat trained with firearms. Damn the man for not practicing his safety trigger hold. He heard Charles get down on the floor behind him. Good. Less likely he’d be hit if the man managed to get off a shot.
“Okay, okay, I’m getting down, I’ve just got a weak knee, early onset arthritis you see, and it’s hard for me to-” Erik started to ease himself down on one knee, as if he was slow and clumsy and arrogant enough to expect the gunman to wait for him. He heard Charles hiss his name in disapproving censure behind him.
“Get the fuck down!” And the man was crossing those last three steps to him, sliding his gun to down to point at Erik’s temple, finger curling against the trigger of the gun.
Erik shot out his right hand nearly too fast to see, seizing the man’s wrist and jerking the man’s whole arm straight and away from he and Charles, and bringing his other hand to strike at the delicate bend of the elbow.
The sound of the gun firing masked the horrible gristly pop as the man’s elbow bent ninety degrees in the wrong direction.
Erik popped up from one knee like a jack-in-the box, crazy-ass smile and all, following through with his momentum to shove the man’s broken arm across his chest to distract him. He snapped out his hand to cup one of the man’s cheeks like a lover before taking one sliding step behind him, seizing the opposite shoulder and jerking his entire upper body taut. He felt the bones in the man’s neck twist and grate against each other for a one tense second before the muscles around them gave with a thick noise.
Erik dropped the man and his newly loosened head to the ground. He rocked his own neck side to side to stretch it, before shucking his suit jacket. Damn, he wished he could have stretched before that. Seeing Charles made him so tight with nerves.
Erik turned to face Charles and locate the gun.
He nearly melted inside when he saw him. He was kneeling in front of him, holding the gun in an absolute travesty of a teacup-grip, two fingers in the trigger well and pointing slightly off center from all the action. He couldn’t help but smile and take a step closer. Charles was so flushed and adorable. He wanted to press kisses all over him and then take him home and show him how to actually hold a gun. Preferably pressed all along his back side. Erik wondered if right now was a good time to ask Charles out on a date. Probably not. He might be too shocky.
“Here,” he coaxed, knowing Charles might be anxious and scared. “Give me that.” His voice was gentle as he reached out a hand, slowly, for the gun. He made sure his body was directly out of the muzzle’s sightline.
“Did you just kill that man? With your bare hands?” Charles blurted, as the gun wavered even farther off-target.
Erik lightly right hand over the gun, and gently loosened Charles fingers from the grip. “He was a bad man.”
Charles arched his eyebrow as if to say, ‘No shit’ and Erik felt a little chagrined. It had worked for the hero in the action movie on primetime last night. Although, truthfully Charles’s only resemblance to the female lead was his naturally bright red lips. Definitely not a match in the intelligence department. Or the bum area. Charles’s cheeks were much perkier.
He took the gun from Charles, flipped the safety, dropped the clip, and checked the ammunition. Ten rounds left. He slapped the clip back in, slid the top back, checked the safety once more, and slid it into the back of his waistband. A nice little Berretta Storm. Not bad. He preferred a Sig for his hands, but this would more than suffice.
Charles looked up at him with wide eyes. “Who are you?”
Erik reached down and gently lifted Charles up by a grip on the biceps. He fumbled for something to say. I killed people for a living? I’m a highly trained assassin? My job as an accountant gets kinda boring and so I have a lot of time on my hands? I watch a lot of cage-fighting? James Bond was my childhood hero?
“I worked as an agent for the Mossad?” Technically true, if it was a rather long time ago. He’d been doing freelance work for a while. He tried to steer Charles farther down the hallway, but Charles was having none of it.
“Charles, we need to go, now, before they send someone else to figure out what happened to him.” Erik jerked his head over to the man he’d downed.
Charles stopped moving completely, flinging out his arms and legs in jumping jack formation as if it would make Erik’s efforts to push him down the hallway worse. The worst part of it was that Charles’s starfish impression partially worked. “I told you! We can’t leave! They have hostages!”
“Oh yes we can.” Erik shook his head at Charles and considered cutting off blood-flow to Charles’s brain, just for the six seconds or so it would take for him to lose consciousness. He settled for wrapping his arm under Charles’s armpits and hoisting him into his side to drag him down the corridor. He couldn’t hoist Charles onto his shoulder, it would slow down his response time too much.
“Oh no you don’t!” Charles struggled valiantly under Erik’s arm, but Erik ignored him and kept dragging him down the hallway. God, what he would give to have Charles wriggle like this under him while he was seated deep inside. “Erik Lehnsherr! If you make me leave. I will. Never. Forgive. You.” He punctuated each word with a little grunt of exertion that made Erik’s cock take notice. But his words made something in his chest clench.
Erik paused in the hallway next to an open door office door. He swung his head around and checked around and behind him before shoving Charles inside and shutting the door behind him. He hustled Charles into a chair and flicked down the blinds. “What do you mean, never forgive me?”
Charles glared at Erik from his chair and tugged down his blue ‘Westminster Bank of the Trust’ cardigan. It was hardly an improvement, as his oxford underneath had tugged loose from his slacks. Erik saw a flash of pale belly before Charles crossed his hands over his chest. His eyes sharpened as something clicked into place inside his mind. “I mean I will never forgive you.”
In the resulting silence, Charles realized he needed to clarify his threat. “I will lose the key to your safety deposit box and I’ll make McCoy deal with you every time you come into the bank and I’ll change my Monday shift to Wednesday and if I ever see you in the grocery store next to my apartment again like I did last Saturday I will tell the grocer that you are a mean and nasty man who is trying to spoil the lettuce and follow me home and Emma will kick you out and make sure all the eggs you ever buy are broken and I will never talk to you again.” Charles finished his horrid run-on sentence in a breathy huff.
Erik felt two inches tall. He hadn’t meant to be caught in Charles’s grocery store last Saturday but he knew how fond Charles was of cantaloupe and with that nasty disease outbreak he’d wanted to test the fruit before Charles ate it. And then he ended up buying half a cart of the ridiculous melons because he hadn’t finished testing them before Charles wheeled around the corner and he couldn’t risk him getting sick. Erik looked at Charles for a long moment, measuring just how serious he was.
“Ok.” Erik said, after he’d contemplated a whole lifetime without Charles’s happy babbling. What do you want me to do?”
Part 3: