Good Boys (8/11)
“Erik that was humiliating,” Charles said in the car.
“You liked it,” Erik said. “Look, Charles, you’re delightful, but this whole charade where you behave like a complete maniac in the bedroom and moan and pant my name and look at me like you think I’m some sort of god and then in the morning want me to act as though it hasn’t happened, as though I couldn’t tug off your shirt and see the marks where I’ve touched you, where you’ve begged me to touch you, as though the next instant we get alone you’re going to be totally aloof and demure instead of dragging me onto the nearest bed and wrapping your wanton little body around me like you know it belongs there -- it’s getting a bit tiresome.”
“Erik,” Charles said. “I’m sorry. It’s a failure of c-”
“It’s a failure of control,” Erik mimicked. “Yes, Charles. So you tell me. But I don’t think you’re even trying to control it.”
“Look, Erik, it’s wrong and dirty and-”
“And you love it,” Erik said. “Don’t say it’s wrong. That’s bourgeois of you, Charles. You’ve read the Greek texts enough times to have an inkling.”
“There were significant differences between our cultures,” Charles said. “The Greeks felt that a manly love between -”
Erik emitted a vague German imprecation that Charles could tell indicated a high degree of disgust. “Charles,” he said. “If you weren’t so entirely fantastic when you allow yourself to be I’d have lost patience with you a long while ago.”
Charles swallowed. Erik had said it almost casually, the way he delivered most compliments, as if unveiling an unpleasant fact. But it made something start humming around inside his chest. “Erik,” he said. “You’re just using me to prove a point,” he said. “You think you can swagger over to me and mutter filthy things and I’ll just bend over and let you do whatever you please to me.”
“I’m not,” Erik said. “I gave up trying to prove a point a long while ago.”
“What do you want?” Charles looked at him.
“I want you to admit that you want me,” Erik said. “And then stop looking away whenever I catch you looking at me. You do that rather a lot.”
“What does it matter if I say it?” Charles said. “I’ve already said it.”
“Things you gasp into my mouth in the throes of passion hardly count,” Erik said.
“You’ll be waiting rather a long time, I’m afraid,” Charles said. “As I said, it’s a failure of control.”
“Ah yes,” Erik said, emitting a rueful chuckle. “It’s a lapse, Charles? I’m chocolate cake? And when we get back to civilization and - Moira - you’re arrogant enough to think you can bottle it all back up, aren’t you?”
“And you’re arrogant enough to think you’ll have bent me so far that I won’t be able to,” Charles said.
“I don’t doubt that you’re able to, Charles,” Erik said. “But I think you’d be a fool if you did.” His hand strayed over to Charles’ knee. “Don’t you ever have any fun?” Erik asked.
“I don’t think we have similar ideas of fun,” Charles said. They had gotten on the road rather later than hoped and now the sun was setting on their left.
“You’ve never fooled around in a car?” Erik asked. “Come, Charles. Fifteen girls? Never one?”
“It’s imprudent,” Charles said.
There was a pause. Erik was wearing dark glasses and Charles tried to read his face without reading his mind.
“Charles, if you keep looking at me like that you’re going to make it difficult to drive.”
“I’m not looking at you,” Charles laughed. “I’m looking out the window. America is rich in scenery.”
“I’m scenic,” Erik said. Behind the glasses he was more than usually inscrutable. “Besides none of the other scenery wants to do indelicate things to you in the back seat at the nearest overlook.”
“Erik,” Charles said warningly. “I think that’s illegal.”
“Not more so than anything else we’re up to,” Erik said.
Charles stiffened.
“It’s unjust to obey an unjust law.”
“I’d find that line of argument more convincing if you weren’t using it to get me in the backseat.”
Erik sighed. “You’d enjoy it. I think you like the danger, Charles.”
“I don’t relish the idea of having myself exposed to the highway patrol as some sort of - debauched exhibitionist.”
“So you admit you are,” Erik said.
They both saw the sign for the overlook at the same time. Erik shot him a look and Charles pointedly stared at the scenery.
Then Erik pulled the car over and they drove up a small road and found a breathtaking chasm and a guardrail and a whole gravelly lot full of empty parking spots.
“Well, Charles,” Erik said.
“I almost think you must have planned this,” Charles said, glancing over to him. “There’s a sunset, for God’s sake.”
“I don’t need a sunset to seduce you.”
Charles’ lips parted around an objection and then he felt Erik’s hand steal over to his other knee and decided not to contest the point. Erik pulled him nearer and Charles glanced around nervously.
“There’s no one here,” Erik said, and something in Erik’s voice made Charles’ pulse begin speeding up and he opened the car door and said, “Well come on then, let’s look at it at least.”
Then Erik caught him by the arm and Charles was kissing him, hard and with a strange relief, like he’d been holding his breath all day long, and then Erik pulled back and said, “All right, let’s look at it.”
They leaned on the hood of the car and watched the sun sink into the gorge. Even with Erik wearing the glasses he was aware of the other man’s gaze on him, and for some reason the scrutiny made him less uncomfortable than usual and he gazed back, taking Erik in, because even though he’d been staring at him for days it had all been furtive glances over chess or from the car or even once or twice a knowing look that blossomed into something longer, and he knew that Erik could see him staring, and - liked it, and Charles propped himself against the car and raked his eyes down Erik’s frame, his gaze lingering a bit in spite of himself at exactly the point Charles Xavier’s gaze wouldn’t have, exactly the spot Charles Xavier would have bent over backwards to avoid, and momentarily he allowed himself to wonder what Erik would look like without the jacket or the turtleneck or the pants or anything at all, body spread over him, thighs clamped around him, hands locking his hands to the bed, taking him from behind while Charles bit into the pillow, and he thought, “For the love of God, Charles, this is an overlook, you’re supposed to be thinking about horses and poetry and hands clasping on deserted beaches, and all you can think of is him fucking you senseless?” And he quickly thought, “Besides that’s an idle speculation.”
“Penny for your thoughts,” Erik said.
Charles found that he was blushing. And, possibly, a bit hard. “Take off those glasses,” he said, and Erik noticed the strain in his voice and said, “Or maybe I can guess.”
“Here,” Charles said, reaching over and taking off the glasses, and then after glancing around another time he caught Erik by the face and kissed him.
“Charles,” Erik said, and Charles muttered, “How would you like it if I - there’s no one here, Erik, I could-” and sank to his knees in front of Erik and Erik said, “Charles, you’re completely debauched” and Charles said, “No, I’m not,” and yanked Erik’s pants open.
“Admit it,” Erik panted. “I think you’re admitting it now. It’s what you want. I’m what you want.” Charles had shoved his pants down and was planting a tantalizing line of kisses along the inside of his thigh, looking up at him, and Erik’s breath caught. “I bet I can tell what you were thinking, Charles,” he murmured. “It’s the only thing you can think of. Let me fuck you, Charles. You deserve to be well fucked. And hard. And often.”
Charles inhaled sharply and Erik’s fingers reached down and tangled in his hair. “You’re disarmingly easy to read,” Erik said. Then Charles’ mouth was on him.
A few moments later Erik hissed warningly, “Charles,” and tugged him up and Charles felt the headlights on them.
“This is almost too typical,” Charles whispered.
But he could feel Erik’s whole body tense, the metal humming in the fender as though Erik were a small engine, felt Erik coiling into something dangerous beside him, and he thought, “Erik, I’ll handle this” and enlaced his fingers in Erik’s and could almost feel the car bending behind them and said, “Erik, trust me.”
The cop car stopped and its lights went off.
“If you can’t I’ve got ways,” Erik said, and Charles got a very definite image of bent fenders and broken limbs and said firmly, “No, I’ll handle it,” and Erik didn’t seem to be standing down at all so he did the only thing he could think of and kissed him, enlacing his other hand in Erik’s hair and claiming Erik’s mouth and meanwhile sensing the door of the cruiser open and the cop step out.
As the cop approached he carefully pictured an abandoned car with no one leaning on its hood, certainly no one whose hands and mouths were locked together, for all the world like a couple of teenagers, furtive and desperate and not doing anything to be too ashamed of, but probably still violating the Mann Act somehow -- Charles always worried that he was violating the Mann Act somehow -- and the man said, “Humm,” and rubbed his face with a hand. Charles thought, “See?” and he felt a warm amazement burning out of Erik and Erik’s indignant thought, “Then why didn’t you let yourself - all those years you could have” and Charles held the image and the cop got back into the car and the headlights flickered on again and they stood there in each other’s arms as the wheels crunched away on gravel and the sound of the engine faded in the distance.
Erik kissed him, plastering his body back against the hood of the car. “Charles you’re a marvel,” he said. “But we’d better try it in the back seat next time.”
“All right,” Charles said.
He didn’t look at Erik for the rest of the car ride. But Erik’s hand rested on his knee and he didn’t move it off.
--
“Ellen,” Charles said, enunciating each syllable carefully and trying not to look at Erik. “There but for an H and you’d be launching ships with your face.”
“I think I’ve heard that before,” Ellen said. He could feel Erik sigh loudly from the other end of the bar.
Perhaps this was how it was going to go. Too close - he had been getting too close, too complaisant, and that morning he’d awakened Erik by crawling into his bed and sliding his mouth down Erik’s chest and wrapping his lips around Erik’s cock, and he didn’t want to think of how many times he’d done that in the past few days, without Erik’s even asking, and it was almost obscene - definitely obscene - and this was not how it was supposed to go at all.
He was going to put a stop to it.
He just needed to remember how.
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and something somethinged the towers of Ilium?” Charles asked, wishing he’d paid more attention to Marlowe’s writing and less to the man’s less than savory personal habits. Not that in practice they couldn’t be quite delightful habits. Not that he couldn’t feel Erik’s eyes on him from the other end of the bar, the gaze humming with the lust that Erik no longer bothered to conceal. “Sweet Ellen, make me immortal with a something-or-other.” Not that he wished he were talking to Erik. Fuck it. Was he still trying to recite Dr. Faustus? The girl was giving him a strange look.
“Is he giving you trouble?” someone said, and Charles noticed for the first time that Ellen was not exactly by herself, and that the man attached to her and now returning from the restroom looked large enough to crush his head in and was giving off a distinct air of menace.
“No,” Ellen said, nervously, and then suddenly Erik was standing at his elbow and asking, “Is he giving you trouble, Charles?”
Charles glanced warningly at him. “Erik,” he said, and he could see the slur forming in the man’s mind before it escaped his lips, something in the way Erik’s hand landed on his shoulder that was almost too casual, as if you could tell from the way Erik’s fingers splayed on his sweater that this was not the only time Erik had touched him, far from the only time -- And then the man said it and Charles said, “I beg your pardon?” and Erik hit him, fist thwacking solidly on the stranger’s square jaw.
The man caught Erik in a headlock.
Then there was an awful wrenching sound, bone tearing from metal, and the man crumpled, clutching a hip, and Charles said, “Erik,” warningly as two more men descended on them. Their bodies were more than usually free of metal. At first Erik held his own in spite of that, but one of them caught him at a disadvantage, shoved him against the bar, was readying a knee for a devastating blow to Erik’s groin-
That was when Charles, almost without meaning to, sent a swift jagged shard of pain into the man’s skull. He dropped to the ground, clutching his head, and Charles grabbed Erik by the arm and turned towards the whole bar and with an effort caught all their attention and said, “Return to your drinks,” and dropped five dollars on the bar and tugged a slightly dazed Erik by the elbow out into the warm night air and down the street to a diner and pushed him into one side of a booth and sat down on the other and hissed, “Don’t ever make me do that again.”
“You looked so concerned, Charles,” Erik grinned, looking only slightly the worse for wear. “You could have made the whole bar do the can-can if you’d a mind to.”
“Erik that was reckless and foolish and you could have gotten us both killed,” Charles said. Without even wanting to he reached over and pushed Erik’s mussed hair away from his forehead and said, “You’re all right?” and Erik laughed.
“Course I’m all right, Charles.”
Then Charles nodded curtly. “Good.” He saw himself - two lapses in ten minutes, three if you counted the look of concern he knew he was failing to keep out of his eyes, four if you counted the way his pulse was going when Erik looked at him like that, lustful and amazed and grateful.
“We have to protect each other,” Erik said. “Or what’s the point?”
And was that the price of it, Charles wondered, looking at him. To be fighting all the time? And was that why Erik’s body looked always tense and coiled and ready to spring, even when he perched on a barstool or was trying to look innocuous?
“Erik this is getting out of hand,” Charles said. He reached over and pressed Erik’s hand on the countertop. “You’re using my - weakness to make me do things I otherwise would not. I’m sorry, my friend, but this has to stop.”
Erik looked at him with almost contempt. “You’ll have to do better than that Charles,” he said.
“I mean it, Erik, I’m done with this,” Charles said. “It’s already gotten us into too many scrapes. It’s dangerous.”
“Of course it’s dangerous. I’m dangerous. You’re dangerous. The two of us together would always be dangerous, Charles, even if you weren’t giving yourself to me every night. Even if you weren’t unhealthily fixated on my cock, which you are.”
“Fuck you,” Charles thought.
“You wish you were,” Erik said.
“I told you, that’s done with,” Charles said. “It has to be.”
Erik looked levelly at him, and Charles flinched a little under the gaze. “Come on,” Erik said, catching him by the elbow, and they were out of the diner and headed back to the hotel room at almost a run, the warm night air singing into Charles’ lungs, Erik’s fingers gripping tight and implacable on his arm. “That’s idiotic, Charles, and you know it’s idiotic, and I’m going to show you,” Erik hissed, as they walked.
“Erik that’s enough,” Charles said, and Erik glanced around and shoved him up against the side of a building and kissed him, forcefully enough to make Charles gasp, and Erik said, “Will that shut you up until we get back to the hotel at least?” and Charles didn’t say anything else.
When they got in Erik started taking off his jacket. “Get on the bed,” he said, almost casually.
Charles lay back, startled, still fully dressed. There was a curious edge to Erik’s tone.
“I’m not going to fuck you, Charles,” Erik said. “But I’m going to make you wish I were.”
“Erik,” Charles hissed.
“Don’t try to stop me,” Erik said, tearing off his shirt, and Charles’ eyes widened in spite of himself at the lean neat network of muscle. Erik was undeniably masculine, and - flawed probably somehow, Charles knew conceptually, but entrancing, and he moved like a panther, as though he had no doubt that he looked magnificent like this, and Charles felt a hot flare of arousal at the pit of his stomach. Then Erik tugged off his pants and his shorts and climbed on top of him and literally tore Charles' shirt off, fabric rending under his hands, and Charles gasped and caught him by the shoulders, for a moment unsure whether he were pulling Erik towards him or pushing him off, but he found that his fingers were running appreciatively over the muscles in Erik’s shoulders, and then Erik hissed, “And everything else,” and Charles complied, tugging his pants and shorts off with more force than he’d expected, and he felt Erik’s gaze on him like a brand, suffused with desire, and Erik said, “Turn over.”
Charles looked at him.
“I told you, I’m not going to. Trust me,” Erik said. But Charles couldn’t help diving into his mind for a moment, and the image he emerged with made him blush and obey. He lay down and then Erik’s body spread over his and he shivered involuntarily at the touch and felt his breaths coming hard and fast and he could feel Erik’s arousal stir against him.
“Are you going to stay put or do I need to do something about it?” Erik asked, his hands clamping Charles’ wrists to the bed, his lips brushing Charles’ ear, and Charles shivered a little into the touch and said, “I might not stay put.”
Erik kissed the back of his neck. “I should have known you’d say that,” he said, and Charles heard, “Of course he’d say that, he’s practically your wet dream,” and then he felt the metal bedstead begin to unravel, and the iron locked his hands to the bed and snagged around his ankles, and he knew when he looked up at Erik that he had almost run out of room to bluff.
Erik pushed Charles’ hair out of his eyes almost gently and kissed him very delicately on the back of the head, half in his hair, half on his neck, and Charles shuddered and muttered, “Erik, please,” not quite knowing what he was asking.
“Charles,” Erik said, getting up and crossing the room and rummaging in one of their suitcases, “whenever you try to pretend you don’t want me in the worst way possible, I’m going to think of this.”
“Downside of being a telepath,” Charles said, because he couldn’t think of anything else. He knew that Erik could see the way he was looking at him, as if he couldn’t get enough of that lean angular body and the perfect immense cock, flushed and erect, and Erik said, “Not for me,” and Charles could tell he was memorizing the look.
Then Erik came back to the bed with something in his hand.
“Don’t worry, Charles,” he said, “although I got this with the inevitable in mind it has other uses,” and Charles choked a little and said, “Don’t call it the inevitable, Erik.”
Then Erik bent down and kissed him and their mouths locked hungrily and fiercely and he bit Erik’s lip and said, “Don’t,” and Erik said, “Why not, Charles, look at you.” Charles felt the image ripple behind his eyelids, and Charles kissed him again and said, “Don’t make me look,” and then Erik began kissing his way across Charles’ shoulders and into his hair and down his back, punctuating the kisses with words. “You’re filthy, Charles, you want to be fucked, you deserve it, you’ll never be able to contain yourself again and I don’t want you to, I want you like this, Charles, I want you as much as you want me, and if you’d just let yourself I think we’re perfect, Charles, no one else is ever going to do this to you, so just admit it and stop running from yourself because there isn’t any point, I’m the only thing you want, you’re mine now, you’ve always been, since you pulled me out of the water, and I’m not letting you drown yourself either,” and then Charles felt Erik’s fingers sliding between his thighs, slick with something and a little careless and Erik said, “Keep your legs together” and then whispered, “I know that’s difficult” and Charles laughed and held his thighs together and Erik slid into the tight space between them and hissed, “Fuck,” and Charles’ back arched helplessly against him and a hot flare of arousal shot through him at feeling Erik there, and Erik laughed against his back and kissed the skin over his shoulderblade and Charles’ eyes flickered shut and he shoved back against him, and the friction the next time Erik thrust into the space between his thighs made him writhe and mutter, “God, Erik,” and Erik hissed, “Do I have to fucking tie you down to the bed to make you admit that you like being ruined, Charles?” and Charles was panting helplessly, rutting into the sheets, and gasped, “Maybe you should, Erik,” and then Erik’s hands clasped over his and Erik thrust against him again and Charles muttered, “Touch me, please,” and Erik had reached around him and was stroking him in time to his thrusts, and he could feel how close Erik was, and Erik half-grunted, half-whispered, “Knew you’d like it Oxford style, Charles,” and then Charles laughed and he could feel Erik’s body jerk against him, and that he knew what it felt like when Erik was about to come was delicious but a little unnerving, because that was the sort of knowledge you only got one way, and he knew how he’d gotten it, mouth stretched around Erik’s cock or hand wrapped around him or body latched onto his, they’d done dozens of things, and he wanted to do dozens more, and then Erik hissed, “You’re close, aren’t you,” and Charles realized he was, and Erik kissed him, his hand pulling a little carelessly the way Charles liked, tugging a wordless cry out of him, and they came together, making a sticky indecent lake in the middle of the sheets, and then Charles felt the metal uncurl from around his wrists and ankles and let Erik pull him into his lap. He rubbed one of his wrists absent-mindedly and Erik noticed and caught the wrist and pressed it to his lips and he heard the thought, “God you’re perfect” and glanced at Erik and said, “So are you, sometimes," and then he was up and in the shower because Charles Xavier wouldn't have said that.
Chapter 9