everything's weird and we're always in danger

[violenthearted]

Who: Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier
What: Settling In...ish
When: Evening, Day 46
Where: Newly occupied House #8
Warnings: Uhh. Shouting and rage and whatnot, so probably language? Maybe tongue kissing? We'll see. Definite warnings for general like, sadness and Erik's delightful past.



Sitting shiva works like this:

It lasts for seven days, and it's only done for immediate family members. Those nearest and dearest: for the loss of a spouse or a sister, a family mourns for a week. No one expects them to cope, no one talks about God's plan. He takes what he wants, all Jews know this. They've known it for centuries, known that wandering in the desert is sometimes all a person gets.

(They say forty years, but they say it rained for forty days and forty nights too: all that means is that it was so long, no one knows how long it was.)

Erik has never met the people who used to live in this house. For all he knows no one ever has, it might all just be set dressing. The half eaten food in the kitchen, the open dresser drawer half emptied--signs of flight. He knows them, knows them as well as the sound of breaking glass. He knows that, and to know this is enough to know that this hollow home must be treated with care. None of it ameliorates his simmering rage, none of it soothes the fact that as far as he's concerned his life's goal has been ripped out from under him at the last possible second--

But it's something.

So he clears the table and waits for the sink to cough up a jolt of rusty water; he washes and dries plates, the sleeves of his uniform soaking lukewarm suds to the elbows. He closes the doors to rooms they won't use, he sets aside clothing meant for a petite woman and a boy of maybe ten or twelve (never forget that you must always be practical; this is the only way you will survive when sentiment will only make you bleed) and sorts out what the two of them could conceivably use.

Charles is outside, having disappeared somewhat mercifully as probably a response to the muscle ticking in Erik's cheek upon entering the house. It's that or the jagged clamor of Erik's thoughts; when he said 'then you'll know to stay out of my head,' it was only half about privacy. He is the only thing stable in a world that seems caught in the grip of an eternal earthquake, and Erik doesn't know whether that means he wants to drag Charles into the magnetic pull of his own orbit and keep him there until the stars burn out, or put the distance of planets between them before he starts depending on the other man more than he already does. He has depended on one thing since he was a bone-thin twenty and learning how to break bones: someday the blood-soaked fever he lives in will break.

And now it seems he can't even have that, because sometimes wandering in the desert is all a person gets. In the old days a person could question his God and maybe even get an answer, but Erik is more than used to God's silence.

(He says the prayer for safe travel anyway, in an empty kitchen to nothing but the drip of the faucet.)

Then there's nothing else to do, the house doesn't look anymore like it was ever lived in. It's not seven days, but it's enough. He squares his shoulders and shutters his expression, and he goes out to the back garden to find Charles.

Comments

[mentis]

Outside the place looks almost peaceful. Charles spends his time alone examining the little patch of grass, the tree, the swaying and untamed flowers that curl against his boots. He thinks for a moment that he should be able to tell how long the people have been gone by the shape and size of green but he's never had to survive out in the wild and those are skills he's been devoid of.

Maybe he wouldn't be able to tell even then, there's nothing in the place he can pick up on, empty of everything expect from the tightly locked cage that is Erik Lehnsherr and his mind. Charles is able to track him from room to room by following the space absent of sound, arms crossed against his chest as he leans against oak. He doesn't like leaving him in there to deal with that alone but there had been a moment where Charles had seen ghosts imprinted on his skin and had known. Weakness - wrongly perceived or not - would have only made Erik angrier, so Charles had done what he thought was best and left. At least for a learned man he knows that somethings are taught through experience and blindly hurtling through that is more damaging than this.

Still it makes him feel almost hollow, no plan, no sign of his sister or the other children in their charge. He should be thankful that Darwin is here, happy that people have given them some of the information they need. But despite all this place has in terms of capturing his attention - the telepath first and foremost - Charles can't help feeling like an anchorless thing. Was it Shaw? Was it Azazel? Or is it true that they've been bought here by something he can't sense?

His thoughts stop like a break, his head lifting even as he senses Erik's approach. He has to swallow something down at the carefully hidden away look upon his friend's face, pushes forward on his feet and tries not to think how wrong it is that the sun is shining dappled through the leaves.

"All done?"

It's all he can think to ask, couldn't even bring himself to inquire if Erik was okay because obviously that's not the case.

[violenthearted]

If Erik reads Charles' body language now and finds pity in it or those damnably blue eyes, he's probably going to end up melting together all the metal on his uniform, so his nod is spare, stance loping and more loose than the taut span of his thoughts indicates. Charles knows better, but Erik needs the facade sometimes, and there's a rough note of gratitude floating somewhere high up in that awareness.

"Should be livable," he shrugs, hazarding "however temporarily," with arched brow. To admit that this may be permanent is untenable, so temporary it stays. He braces one hand on the pillar of the back porch (he's standing above the steps, hasn't even really come down into the garden) and lets air out through his nose, considering. "If nothing else we won't have to spend the evening in leather and spandex. Although the man of the house was rather taller than you, and more broad. You may be obliged to tighten your belt."

Those are almost jokes, or at least they're wry, and maybe that's part of Erik's keeping his shields up too, but then they have been present for so long he barely knows what's underneath anymore. He beckons Charles into the house with one curled hand, stepping back toward the porch door that leads into the kitchen.

[mentis]

"When we get back remind me to ask Hank what the bloody hell he was thinking."

It's more as an aside under his breath, Charles' gaze kept firmly from focusing on Erik too long as if he's aware of some form of social grace under his ineptitude. Still he can almost sense something, as though there is a blanket covering the house, a hush of quiet that feels nigh unbreakable.

Charles hadn't even been able to attend his father's funeral, too young and too distracted by the sudden and new impression of too many mourning thoughts and the terrible, sickening undertow of greed beneath them. He wonders if this is what it might have felt like had his mutation not coiled into life like a snake feeding off grief.

Focusing on Erik's shoulders, he files the thoughts away for another time and steps into the cool shade of a bare house. Erik's efforts are inscrutable and almost clean, everything back where it should have been or gone completely and Charles wonders if the previous occupiers would have been happy that he had.

"I'd make a toga out of the bedsheet if I thought I could get out of this," he says louder this time, moving back to the point because he wants to say something before he feels as though he has no voice, "I imagine a sight like that might force our captors hand."

A small smile, very barely there, "They'd have to send us back just to get rid of me."

[violenthearted]

Erik has his back half-turned (he's at the sink, filling two glasses with water; there was a smaller, plastic cup imprinted with something like ducks among the others in the cupboard, he doesn't know for sure because he shut it too fast) but at that he turns back and smiles, a closed, sloped thing. "What a world we've come to if that's the case."

He means, since whoever brought them here obviously isn't intimidated by him (which as far as Erik is concerned is both foolish and an advantage he could use), wouldn't it be a delightful irony if Charles wrapped in bedsheets turned the tide. If any imagery crosses his mind in the same moment it's quickly submerged, and probably just an echo of the fact that today they've been mistaken for lovers twice in about the span of as many minutes. In fairness that's hardly been the worst thing to happen, but even as bitter and brittle as Erik feels in the moment, he works through it. If he slows down, if he stops moving, he may never find his momentum again. So he fills water glasses and sets them opposite one another at the little table in the corner of the kitchen. It's more like a breakfast nook, when beyond the room where they are now there is a slightly fancier dining room, but Erik would rather eat in here, and he suspects the same of Charles.

"As fetching as the idea is," his eyelashes are down; he's not up to his usual banter that does, frankly, often border on flirting (which is really just torturing himself), but it may be its more drawn and paler cousin, "It won't be necessary."

Which is truly tragic. Meanwhile, practical details, which Erik lines up like a row of dominoes while settling his lanky self neatly into one of the kitchen chairs; Charles will notice the difference in his posture when in the mansion's library he sprawled like he belonged there. "There are two bedrooms upstairs, and one on this level. Sleep wherever you'd like, but the master bedroom's the one on the left."

He refrains from elaborating on the fact that the other room was obviously a child's; as much as can be done to erase that fact already has been. That this means Erik is taking the bedroom on the ground floor probably only surprises Charles as much as he might be surprised to hear that water, at this juncture, remains wet. It's the much more defensible position. "After that we'll need to plan, and there's no use trying on an empty stomach."

There wasn't much in the kitchen or pantry, but he's managed to scrounge together what he thinks will hold them for a few days. He knows how to stretch rations to a nigh-unhealthy degree, but he's not willing to subject Charles to that yet.

[mentis]

It's like two steps forward and a hundred yards back, watching Erik fold himself into tight constraints and spaces. He'd grown used to his friend and the commanding way he took up an area, demanded Charles attention like there was a thread attached to him that Erik only had to pull. Now though, there's something diminished about his personality, the weight of him on the back of his proverbial feet. It's a situation Charles has only read in the brief thunder-clash of their first meeting, but it echoes around his head and makes him sit a little too quickly, fingertips pressed lightly to glass because he can't bury them anywhere else.

He'll take the room Erik has given him distinct instructions towards only because he doesn't want to explore any further, doesn't want to put the pieces of the family before them together. There's something that climbs up his spine at the memory of his earlier conversations - the drugs, the monsters, the body in the fountain - and even those who caught his attention aren't enough to stop the restless itch.

"We won't be here for long."

Ever the optimist, Charles thinks they can find a way out - for them and for everyone else too because of course he's begun to worry about the citizens already.

"If we can get in, then there must be a way to get out. It's the only logical conclusion."

[violenthearted]

For once, they appear to be in agreement, although on Erik it isn't optimism, but fatalism. He is fated to destroy Shaw, otherwise what has he been doing his entire life? Who will avenge Edie if he doesn't?

His nod back is short, his smile grim. "Either find a way or make one." A one-shouldered roll of a shrug, mouth hidden by his glass, eyes colorless above it. "Or break one."

Because why not add that, for the benefit of the camera he can see over the refrigerator. He looks directly at it for a second, challenging, and then folds his long hands in front of him. "Get changed. Get settled in," he instructs, the sneer suggesting he is commanding Charles to do something deeply unworthy of either of their attention. "I'll see what I can do with this lot."

'This lot' being the somewhat meager supply of canned things on the countertop, which Erik indicates with a hand. It's a hugely British phrase for him to be using, but if Erik is largely closing himself off he's also sticking more closely to Charles than usual, and that means picking up more of his speech.

While Charles takes himself off to pick through the supply of clothing that is all markedly too big for him, Erik shucks his uniform in his bedroom fortress and notes the varying array of bruising induced by the plane crash, but judges he has no more serious injury than a little discoloration and soreness. He doesn't let it slow him down. Meanwhile he's found a button down and pair of slacks that fit ....sort of well, although the trousers hang off of his hips and the shirt is tight at the shoulders while baggy everywhere else, but it's serviceable enough. (Neatening his hair in the bathroom mirror is less an afterthought than it is some kind of--unexpressed need, as if he's going to get to feel normal here at all.)

The meal he cobbles together (there are no usable condiments in the fridge, but some mostly empty spices still gather dust at the back of one cupboard) involves very tired looking string beans and some kind of tinned fish soaked in salt. Erik's jaw tightens, wherever Charles arrives in the middle of his manhandling dinner; they need better quality food or malnutrition is going to set in very quickly. Another person might not think that far ahead, and Erik tells himself it's only theoretical; they won't be here long enough for it to matter--

But it's still there.

[mentis]

He allows himself a brief moment of panic in a strangers bedroom, breathes in and out as slowly as he can as he winds a hand through his hair. There's too much for even his all-encompassing mind to comprehend, too many factors that strain against the shelves constructed in his thoughts. He keeps trying to pick something to focus on and another thing comes flashing to the forefront in neon strip light.

The cameras are only second to Erik's lifeless expression and Charles continues to be unsurprised by that. Unsurprised in the way that Erik has taken up so much of him since the very moment they met, that he has his own place in the corners of Charles, tightly locked up because it wouldn't do to let any of the feeling leak out. That people keep mistaking them for something other than they are troubles him too. They live on the tail-end of a time where friendship - the type where you are never sure where one person ends and the other begins - has taken on a darker note to be pushed aside and Charles ... frets. Another reason for Erik to pull away, another blot to the light he brought with him. He wasn't the only one drowning that day.

He rubs at his forehead with the palm of his hand, moves closer to one of the cameras, head tilted to see it. His power is one that is unseen, one that blurs behind his eyes and stays as far from human knowledge as possible. Erik's on the other hand is a part of him, an extra limb he uses any day at any time because why should he not? Charles will probably find it easier to hide. Erik -- he's not sure if Erik will. If only there was a way to turn them off. He's not as technologically minded as others, Hank would probably know what to do with it, hell, even Erik. But he doesn't want to ask, feels his tongue stupid in his mouth. There needs to be some control back to this, needs to or he might just lose what little he has. Turning his back to the black lens, Charles focuses on all the foolish buckles on his uniform and sheds it like a second skin, is glad for the opportunity to do so because it feels much like wearing a costume.

Erik was right about the clothes, they hang down on him but they are infinitely more better than the way the leather sticks to skin. So he leaves the room as quickly as he came to it, moves back down the stairs without his partner's silent grace. For a moment he feels monumentally tired, the pang on seeing Erik both so lost and so in charge at once only heightening the feeling.

"I feel rather like I'm in some sort of sinister burlesque show."

Eyes drifting to the cameras as he leans against the doorframe, sleeves sliding a little over his knuckles.

[violenthearted]

Erik's mouth twitches, but he doesn't need to bite the inside of his cheek to cut down his smile. "Standard procedure," he says, seemingly offhand, voice calm even as his hands are white and flat on the counter in front of him, and he bows his head so that his face is half in shadow under the cupboard before turning back to Charles.

If he's keeping his thoughts from Charles in the moment it's as much mercy as it is a desperate bid for the privacy of his own pain; he is awash in memories he hasn't seen fit to dwell on in a decade. Charles's senses are acute, of course, and Erik's defenses at this point are nothing more than strong will, so it's unlikely that all of this can be hidden: the neat rows of walking corpses putting one foot in front of the other; to stumble is to ruin the line and men and women have been shot for less, the dry voices out of cracked lips spitting a number rather than a name, six digits that fly like bullets: this is who you are now. Not a man, not a child, but a thing wearing rags, branded in inexorable ink and set apart.

It was only later that he understood any of this, when he heard the stories of others who had been there. When he was eleven, and then twelve, and thirteen (he'd been fourteen when Shaw had taken an interest), he had known nothing but fear, and the reassurance of his parents that if they kept their heads down and did as they were told, everything would be all right. Alles gut.

He's not eleven anymore. He refuses to stand for this, it's not to be borne, this stripping of dignity in something as innocuous as baggy clothes; that's just how it starts. It is the top of a very long spiral in darkness that can go down and down and down without ever hitting bottom, and he's barely thinking about what he's doing when he crosses the kitchen to Charles and steps right into his space, long hands turning sleeves and tucking in fabric, plucking at his collar until--well.

It's not as if a magic transformation occurs, Charles' clothes still don't fit. But they look better than they did, and Erik looks suddenly more present, a spotlight flaring behind his paper-cut shadow. He holds Charles by the shoulders and looks at him fiercely, mouth threatening to do--something, something it flattens to a straight line rather than doing. "I'll get us out. I swear to you, Charles. And I won't--" (let them) (they won't break you) "--don't get used to these," he finishes, a little awkwardly, rubbing the vast swathe of extra material at Charles' shoulder between thumb and forefinger, and it's almost a joke. Let it be that.

....so they should eat now, yes? Yes.

[mentis]

If he's surprised by Erik's sudden transformation in front of him then he doesn't say anything. He lets hands tuck in fabric and tries not to focus on the wall of soundless presence that he is present in his mind. Charles doesn't pry, wouldn't want to anyway, knows that all of this is like watching death come creeping in and not having the voice to scream it down. He simply smiles a little softer than usual, blue eyes following the path of his fingers and lets his shoulders drop.

"Don't worry, my friend," his voice is like a murmur of sound in someone else's kitchen but at least it's a start, "I've never been very good at being bohemian, I won't."

There's a moment where he flounders, face carefully set but it's obvious that he has no idea what to do next. So he tips his head up, "We'll be fine."

More so a repeat for Erik's sake, proof that he is taking in the words, that he trusts. Charles wants to protect him but he assumes - perhaps rightly - that the only way he can help is by letting Erik control each moment in his steel grip.

[violenthearted]

"Bohemian," Erik repeats, making it this time to almost a real grin, one toothy and sharp, "No, I can't picture you in a garret."

Which is sort of a lie; he's visual enough to imagine it instantly, and for the moment it lasts it's sort of marvelous, Charles barefoot and inkstained, with candles for light and filmy curtains, scratching through dreadful rhyming poetry with the same concentration he allots to his genetics research. Erik's lashes come down and he steps away, brushing off Charles' shoulders as if to dust away the weight of what was just expressed between them. "We need to eat."

So that's that, Erik sitting at the corner table and working methodically through his own plate without a wince. He's learned to appreciate the texture and taste of good food, the way it suffuses the body with a comfort far more complex than merely the replacement of calories, but he also remembers what it was like to starve, so he's more than capable of powering through much nastier fare than this.

[mentis]

There's a moment where Charles' laughter is startled, a fleeting but musical sound that gets lost in the scrape of his chair pulling back as he sits. He doesn't speak, mostly because he's afraid if he tries he might ask questions, might be unable to stop himself from attempting to draw Erik out. It would be remarkably unfair to do that to his friend, not with the tightness in his shoulders barely loosening even with the echo of his thoughts. So he sits and eats, slow and his own thoughts turning to his sister. When Charles was twelve he developed an aversion to asparagus and that's all he can think about now, expression thoughtful. Raven used to distract his mother on the rare occasion she had been there while he filled napkins with the food. They'd then feed them to the wild rabbits on the grounds as though trading sodden vegetables would have won them over a pet.

He thinks about telling Erik this - that his propensity for luring strays started at an early age. Instead he lifts his chin to look at him properly and sighs.

"Do you really think I run a school in the future?"

There's a curious tilt to his voice. To run a school seems like an awful lot of responsibility, he doesn't mind lecturing - why else would he be a professor? But a school means more than that, means not specializing like he does, means children and taking care of more than he is now. He doesn't feel like he's done a very good job of it so far but ... well, she had said Erik was a doctor there, that had to be something, didn't it?

[violenthearted]

Erik's own thoughts have drifted a little; he's mostly thinking about how to make the remains of dinner more palatable, and also where to ....hide the rest of their food so no one else will get to it, the latter less conscious than the former. But he notices when Charles' gazes hones in on him, and presses a napkin to the line of his upper lip in considering the question. (Yes, he found napkins. Being civilized in such a place feels--strange, like he's regressing back into that ravaged twenty year old, all raggedy hair and hollow pale eyes, the boy who would eat anything that was thrown to him. That person might as well be dead, as far as Erik is concerned; he refuses to be that again, and so they have napkins, and neatly set silverware in the correct lines.)

"You collect strays with such avidity, why not?"

As he ...plucks the very words from Charles' head. Sometimes that just happens, especially since 'strays' is the least charitable word Erik can think of in the moment for their rag-tag bunch of marvels. He'd never gotten the chance to see most of them perform as soldiers, not after Banshee had jumped out of the jet, and the hot flash of anger that induces nearly surprises him. He feels--what, he feels cheated? Not to see what those lost children had become? When they'd started out at this endeavor, he hadn't cared what would become of any of them, and he wonders how that changed so quickly without his notice.

But then he knows the answer to that, or at least part of it--Charles. Charles, who cares with such wide capacity it's as if he's never had his heart broken, never been disappointed in the weaknesses of men. "I think you could do anything."

He says that ....so casually, with the simple grace of belief in gravity. Charles could do anything he wanted to do. "It's certainly more likely than putting my medical skills to work. I can stitch a wound or put on a tourniquet, but I've been told my bedside manner lacks charm."

[mentis]

"Well, you've never been by my bedside so I wouldn't know."

Charles' gaze dips, lips curling into something more firm and honestly happy for a moment. He is not a creature who falls prey to compliments that often, it usually means someone is looking for something ( sex, money, whatever the currency of the hour is ) but with Erik there is an undertow. He can't imagine his friend saying I think without him truly believing it. To say that it warms something in him would be an understatement, he feels as though clouds are almost breaking, that the sudden grey and oppressive weight of being absent from what they know doesn't feel so heavy.

Maybe that's why the ever-present and slight flirtation creeps back in, Charles fingers curled neatly around his fork and his head bowed but still smiling.

"A school. I've never thought about it before. I like teaching though, so it makes sense."

[violenthearted]

To say that Erik puts the troubles of the moment aside would be a lie; he never really puts anything aside. But one of the perks of thinking the way he does is that he can keep his anger and talk of something else, especially if it interests him. If he were a creature of softer manners he'd consider early on this might lead into an argument, but for one he obviously is ...not, and for another he never minds arguing with Charles. It's invigorating, intellectually and--socially, he supposes, although he's never sure what the right word there would be. Socialization doesn't seem to encompass all their friendship has become in so short a time.

He aims his knife like he's making a point with it, cutting the air with a short, steady jerk of his wrist. "When mankind learns of the existence of mutants, have you given thought to how many children will be turned out of their homes? How many husbands will cut ties with their wives? They'll all need somewhere to go, and they'll need to know how to defend themselves. If you can do for them what you did for me--"

Something catches like the click of a key turning at the back of his eyes, and he clears his throat and sets his knife down, knowing full well he's not just talking about the unlocking of his mutation. "You made me--more myself. Imagine if you could give that gift to every mutant. We could make them strong together, Charles."

They just have to get home first. And Erik must kill Shaw. Then he'll be able to move on, and if this is the future, then--it's better than of the alternatives he's never let himself hope for.

[mentis]

Guileless blue eyes fix on Erik again, his hands settling against the tabletop and he remains silent for a longer beat of a moment than he usually would. He should argue the point, that the human race might have learnt now, that they could be trusted with the truth but really all he can focus on is the unexpected pang in his chest, the way Erik is looking at him.

"It was never just one way, you know that."

There's no question to it. Before Erik, before the moment where he'd had to throw himself into the water for him, Charles had been ... alone. He'd had Raven and peers and his teachers and people but there had been an ache in him that hadn't been something that could be banished. Here, together, they have something. Like the pieces fitting together. He cares for Erik a great deal despite how different their opinions are.

"I have to hope for the best, Erik."

Looking down, folding his hands together for a moment, "That people will remember that they love and that love is more important than change. But that won't mean I will idly stand by, I think ... I think I like the idea of the school. I'll fix what I can."

[violenthearted]

"You must have been quite tired of playing chess alone," Erik crisps back, as if this is all he has to offer another person, especially when that person is uninterested in learning how to snap necks, for instance. "But you do that. And what you can't fix, that's where you'll learn I'm good for something."

Which unmistakably is about something like snapping necks, and they always talk this way to each other; there's no derision in Erik's voice the way there's no guile in Charles' blue eyes (if there were Erik could rid himself of him; in a way everything he does is always manipulative, and that's necessarily always a bad thing, just a product of an environment where he has learned that anything in his periphery must become a tool of some kind--he knows how to work with nothing when he's had far less, so he can shape or break or remake anything, but he won't tolerate such attempts on himself, not anymore)--he doesn't sneer, only looks mildly incredulous, the way he always is when Charles professes to believe in something invisible to Erik. Erik's god is an angry one, but Charles--Charles is a humanist, and he believes in people the way Erik believed in God as a child.

If he believes in anything stronger now, he believes in himself, believes in his ability to shore up the cracks where hope can't reach; if he has to mortar those walls in blood he'll do it; the mistake anyone might make about the two of them is thinking Erik wants Charles to be like him, and nothing has ever been further from the truth. Erik wants to believe in a world where people like Charles can still exist, that they won't inevitably be ruined by the damage human beings do to one another just by proximity when they aren't actively trying to wipe one another out. In Erik's world hope can only exist behind walls; to let it out into the world is to kill it.

His plate is empty by now; he gives it an idle turn on the table by sheer force of habit even if there's nothing left to be cleaned from its surface.

[mentis]

Eliminating hunger takes off the jagged edge of anxiety in his stomach but it leaves behind something more hollowed out in his wake. Charles lifts the glass of water Erik had given earlier as though suddenly aware of his thirst or maybe just to do something with his hands so he doesn't reach across the table and tug. It's a complicated mess of emotion, a twisting, spiraling thing that builds between them. Charles isn't sure of himself and he wants to keep the only thing he is sure about as close as possible.

"My knight," he murmurs, glass clinking as he puts it down, "Yes, I know."

It's part teasing because how could he talk about it with all the earnestness it deserves? Erik would laugh, or perhaps Charles would laugh at himself.

[violenthearted]

The fact that Erik is driven to be moving at most times and taking care of things even when he's nominally still may be the only thing that saves him here, since when Charles levels that particular honorary at him he's turned mostly back to the sink with both sets of dishes, and is thus spared any need to explain away the sudden flush that attacks somewhere behind his ears. It's gone far too quickly to catch, as is the trip in his heartbeat like the trigger of a landmine, and his cough gives almost no indication how thoroughly through him that murmur went.

"Barbarians," he disclaims, of knights, sounding like it's a joke. "So indiscriminate in their slaughter the chivalric code had to be invented. If you're suggesting I have a penchant for violence I'm hurt."

Yes. Absolutely that's what's going on. He rinses their dishes and dries them with the sunflower printed towel that hangs over the faucet, brushing his long hands free of water when that's done. "You've noticed we're distinctly lacking in perishables."

It's not a question, and considerably more serious than any facetious banter about knights. (His face still feels very warm, but if he's still colored it can't be helped; he refuses to hide as if a lack of eye contact could save him somehow.)

[mentis]

There's a moment where Charles seems to catch the whisper of something coming from Erik, the pool of colour that infuses from his mind and as much as he wants to, he doesn't chase it back to its origin. He instead watches the line of his friend's shoulders, listens to the tone of amusement that has very slowly crept into his voice.

But then Erik is addressing him and Charles blinks, leans his chair back on two legs and nods. "A few people have mentioned that, yes."

He's aware of a statement on the horizon, the way Erik stands as if ready for battle, the tide of his mind ebbing away from Charles again. He is much clearer to the telepath when he is open and he knows when silence begins to seep in there's something there that needs to be discussed. So he lets Erik take the lead for now.

"It troubles you."

Of course it would, he's not questioning. He knows in as much as he's read or felt from Erik or guessed - he's not painting his companion's answers for him nor would he. He's just trying to get around to actually talking.

[violenthearted]

Erik's mouth - mentioned often, but then he doesn't realize how expressive he actually is, generally; the light color of his eyes means that's where most of the feeling in his face ends up - doesn't twitch so much this time as curl, flattening out to paleness at the corners. "It does."

Another man might run his hands through his hair, or shift his stance from one foot to the other, but as Charles has correctly recognized this is Erik getting ready to stand his ground, and that means that he doesn't move. There's no gesturing with the span of his hands, his arms stay crossed and his feet stay planted. "They've worked out some kind of rudimentary bartering system. Clothes of a certain size, cigarettes. Whatever sundries."

Cigarettes sound appealing, frankly; he has something of a nicotine withdrawal headache starting, but those aren't as high on the ladder as food. He'll worry about creature comforts when he can be sure literal starvation is no longer on the table. "And there are the drop-offs, but we can't afford to rely on those."

As a scientist Charles must be aware of all sorts of experiments where animals are starved to see how long they can last before turning on one another; it's an argument Erik doesn't need to make. "The sustainability of living off the land comes to mind as well, but when dealing with our fellow prisoners--I'll handle it. It won't be necessary for you to trouble yourself."

Again: this is not a question.

[mentis]

He makes a noise, the slightest exhale of a breath, the bastard cousin of a laugh. It's not what he had expected, some strategic plan maybe, an order placed down from on high because Erik knows what he is doing and Charles would have listened to that. But this? It kicks somewhere in his gut and he automatically shakes his head to try and clear it from the sudden rush of noise. He doesn't stand though, doesn't rise to the fight in Erik's body because why should he?

"As ... generous as I'm sure you're being, Erik, I am very capable of taking care of myself."

It's a closed statement, calm and collected for all the good it might possibly do him. There are very few things that Charles Xavier will not be but a burden is close to the top of that list. Especially to Erik, who has already lived something monumentally worse than this, who thinks he has to protect the soft academic. It makes his stomach churn and his face flush ever so slightly to think of the judgement so easily made.

"I'll admit I might not be as skilled as we need but I can learn."

[violenthearted]

If Charles isn't willing to rise Erik takes up that space for him almost immediately; he wasn't expecting an answer back to that although maybe he should have been. His answering laugh is brittle, as if he's laughing at himself for thinking this could be so simple, and so - even if there's no fight to be taken, yet - he does take it to Charles, unfolding from the edge of the sink to drift closer like a ghost. He imagines he can see through his own hands as he lifts them, palm up, imagines he can see all the small easily breakable bones in a gesture that looks like supplication and is just the opposite.

"There's nothing to learn. Do you have any idea what it's like to be hungry, Charles? I don't mean peckish, I don't mean you lost yourself and missed a meal, I mean--"

There's no articulating what he means. He could, but to dredge that up--he cannot afford for Charles to pity him an ounce more than he already does. Charles has to be believe that Erik is untouchable, unbreakable, that nothing can get through him. If he doesn't believe that, then how can he possibly believe Erik can protect him?

He's looming, and aware of it; he's never used his physicality with Charles this way, bracing a flat hand on the table so that his shadow falls over the slighter man--but then they have never discussed anything so personal between them. (what do you know about me?) "You can't imagine what you'll become willing to do. And you won't. I won't allow it."

[mentis]

Any other man and they might have backed down in an instant. But Charles is tipping his head back and staring at Erik, nothing but the clear light in his eyes and a mouth that betrays something quite like confusion.

"So you're just going to carry my weight, are you?"

His voice is dropped low, an unfathomable ache settling behind his ribs and his chair righted on four legs. "I don't want you to."

Because Erik is a survivor and it isn't fair, Charles doesn't want to bow him under the insistency that he must protect him. He's not a fragile creature and even if he can't imagine the horrors of needing to prostrate yourself for basic neccessesity, the thought of Erik doing it for him is even worse.

[violenthearted]

In what is perhaps some kind of minor miracle of the legitimately religious kind, Erik refrains from saying that it doesn't matter what Charles wants, although frankly that may just be because it's poor rhetorical strategy. "It has nothing to do with carrying your weight. Don't talk like I think you're useless when you know it isn't true. It's beneath you."

He doesn't know what Charles is trying to do here, perhaps appeal to Erik's better character. The problem is that as far as Erik's concerned he doesn't have one, not when it comes to this. He's willing to be as ruthless as he has to be, and so tragically it's that that softens his voice, leans him in like Charles has his own magnetic pull. "Charles, please. I won't--I can't see you lowered to that, not when I could stop it. It's nothing I haven't done before."

'That.' Erik doesn't elaborate, but then again that seems to be belaboring the point. "Let me do this," he says, if it's a command (it is) it's just as much an entreaty. "There are--there are things that shouldn't be allowed to happen," and he doesn't add that they've already happened to him, doesn't, can't, it's like trying to spit up cement swallowed wet and then solidified in the throat. To see Charles brought to the depths of basest human need, Erik thinks, and in this way even though he doesn't mean for it it's as loud as an air raid siren--it would kill him, when nothing else has been able to in thirty years.

[mentis]

"Erik."

It's a startling thing, to suddenly be so close enough to see the finer dusting of freckles against the bridge of his nose, to read the endless pain and tortured panic in his wide and wild eyes. Charles' fingers clutch the table top, his breathing still hitched with the mild thread of anger he'd felt at Erik sacrificing himself for the benefit of keeping his dignity intact.

"Erik, please, you can't imagine I would want that. You can't believe I could possibly live with myself if I let you ... I would rather --."

Rarely is Charles Xavier at a loss for words and he wonders if this is some form of cosmic joke - when he needs them the most he can't find them - but he just tries to settle himself and read Erik as well as he can, the rush of thought he's getting a complicated tangle.

"Not for me. You should not have to."

[violenthearted]

Erik laughs like sandpaper, a rough, bloody bark indicative of the kind of frustration that blots out real words. At this distance he could count Charles' eyelashes if he wanted, could mark each single gray hair in the strand at his part (it had taken Erik until the morning after he'd decided to stay with the CIA to notice, and he'd thought then how old Charles must sometimes feel; strangely, he thought that made him like him just a little bit better), and this is dangerous: to be this close is to be known, to be unzipped at the ribs and let Charles get his hands into the barbed wire mess that is Erik's heart. He should pull away, and doesn't; it's too important to have an answer to this.

"If not you, then who else?" His gaze is fixed, something roiling in the gore-streaked waves that are the surface of his mind, shadows threatening to break the surface. "I'm no martyr, no sheep to be led peacefully to slaughter."

Erik smiles, and on someone else it would look sad; set over the long elegant curve of his mouth it breathes like mourning bells instead, a longing for something so lost it's unrecognizable. "You'd bleed for anyone, you wear the world on your shoulders and you pretend it weighs nothing, but I--there is no one else I would offer this to, Charles."

The question this begs, of course, is why.

[mentis]

"I just don't understand --."

Why? Why has Erik deemed him the only one worthy of his time? Why would Erik break his back just to keep Charles from doing the same. It doesn't make any sense to him. Because yes, they are friends, quick to an easy affection that Charles has longed for since he was young and romantic and reckless, but he assumes that is more on his part than the man towering over him. Because Erik has a cause and Charles' cause is ... Erik.

He's been ignoring Raven's sidelong curious glances for as many weeks as he's lived since he jumped in after Erik. Because he doesn't have the words to explain what it's like, what the first pure breath of air after suffocating had become. He's a man of a dozen meaningful statements and Erik had chiseled it all away.

"I don't ... " a helpless, unhappy breath, "Erik, just teach me. Neither of us has to -."

Suffer.

[violenthearted]

To say that Erik's relationship with his own name is complicated would be a pitiful understatement, but words are often a poor substitute, so complicated it is. He's never been fond of the kind of person who uses another's name frequently in conversation as if this ensures some kind of intimacy, as if they're instant friends--

But then he hasn't used his own name in years. Erik Lehnsherr isn't inscribed into any of his handful of passports, or anywhere else that has survived the ravages of time. He supposes somewhere there is a ledger that bears the numbers tattooed on his arm, that theft of culture and history and family, but--with Charles there had been no point in an alias. Charles had known his name before Erik had so much as spoken to him aloud (or shouted at him, as the case had been). Erik's name in his mouth is--different, in a way he can't (or won't) conceptualize. He knows that it aches, like ice breaking up in his chest or the slow return of blood to a dead limb. Of that much he is sure.

And maybe that's how he's become this person who does exactly the same thing he's been so scornful of; he is aware of how often he calls Charles by name; it's always deliberate. It's a touchstone, as intimate and sharp as tapping a person on the inside of the elbow to get his attention. (I need you to listen, because you are all I can see.)

"You ask too much, Charles," he says, jaw tight, eyes striated in their permutations of constantly shifting color. The precipice he's standing on seems to loom in front of him (if he loses this now--he's always known how to be alone, and in his worst moments he's angry at how effortlessly Charles seems to have taken that from him) and he steps back, finally, leans away to cross his arms over his chest. "Don't ask me to do that to you. I won't."

He almost laughs now, helpless with it, arms loosed to gesture like he's trying to hold impossibility between his spread hands. "You really don't understand, do you? You've no idea of your own significance."

To Erik, that much is jaggedly obvious once filtered from the mass of noise in his head. "But then I suppose you have no idea what it's like to want something you can't have."

[mentis]

He rises like an old man, shoulders hunched a fraction and his jaw set but nothing can really dull the affect of the expression in his eyes. Charles is an open book for anyone who had ever cared to read it and he can count the very small number who have without a thought. So he curls his hand around the lip of the table, thumb against knotted wood and his voice a soft torrent of unhappiness.

"I can't imagine it in the way you must be thinking, Erik, but I have wanted some things I have no hope of ever receiving."

His mouth twists, bitter for a moment. Charles has only ever craved companionship. For a telepath this might be laughably pathetic - he can read people so easily but there has ... he loves his sister but having someone know him right down to the very core has yet to be realized. Erik comes close, Erik with his cruel mouth and the set of his beautiful hands.

"I'm not going to argue self-worth with you," he murmurs, running a hand through his hair, sleeve coming untucked momentarily. "I care for you, don't you understand that? And I don't know why - but you don't have to protect me from this."

[violenthearted]

Erik's mind flinches, as if Charles has struck him a blow to the face, even if the set of his features stay impassive and almost chilly. He's trying without success to fling up some kind of shielding, to put layers of lead between Charles' brilliant, impossible mind and his own, and then his expression fractures into a thousand shards of glass, pupils swimming. Over his shoulder, the lidless black eye of the camera fizzles and crumples in on itself, and for an endless instant there's only the sound of dying machinery.

"You cannot possibly care for me the way I want you to," Erik says; he's trying for icy, but the reality is that he sounds nothing so much as exhausted. To have said this, to have given this admission is to damn himself from one end to the other, but as tired as he is of today and its wrenching consequences, of everything else he is weary of hiding. He can still look after Charles even as this breaks them apart; he knows, he can be the wheel that doesn't make a sound.

[mentis]

He feels Erik before he hears the words, the dark swooping colour inside his skull, the echo of a yearning that Charles himself has been cultivating for what feels like an eternity. The camera cracks and he can't even bring himself to look away from the eye of the storm, can't pull back because Erik has taken his anchor and yanked him along the sea bed.

"I care for you more than I thought was physically possible," he murmurs, a step forward, careful to not break Erik's gaze or startle him away, "More than I ever had and you think I can let you hurt because of me."

He reaches out, hand hovering just above Erik's elbow, "Because I do, you know, I really do."

[violenthearted]

"Nothing can hurt me," Erik shrugs, but it's shaky and by rote, hollowed out like the inside of a corpse. It's so much easier than touching the rest of that, when hope is clattering around in his ribs like a trapped bird; if he had the means he would break its spine as easily as a sparrow's, but Charles is so close and so goddamn gentle, and he doesn't finish his sentence with except you, but it hangs in the air like a subtitle.

They're close enough to touch, which is not as strange as it might be (although more electric, now); where they're from two men could share markedly physical affection with nothing but friendship between them. Erik doesn't close that distance just yet, and the lines of his body are still humming like he might run, but--he hasn't, yet, so that's something.

He centers himself, as much as that's possible. Nothing can hurt him; he is iron, and he can remember what it was like to breathe before this. "I have no interest in becoming a notch on your bedpost."

As a statement it'd be fairly cruel, except that's just ...fact. Erik has seen Charles with enough women to know that's often how he seeks companionship and shores himself up, but he also knows that it is always temporary. "If we do this--you'd be mine. Do you understand that?"

[mentis]

"You idiot thing," Charles breathes, his whole body thrumming with untamed energy. He wants to touch, wants to pull Erik closer and show him but he's right - of course he is, he wears his flirtations like a shield and holds himself apart because he is free with his lips and his compliments. But Charles has never wanted like sex was a physical need, if he didn't get to touch and hold on then he might die.

"I didn't jump after you," he hums, finger tips touching his chest and then reaching out to mirror the action against Erik's own, blue eyes impossibly wide and almost terrified, "I was pulled."

A breath, "I have never been anything but."

[violenthearted]

If Erik is easiest to read when his mind is open, then now he is as clear as the perfect blue of tropical shoals where before there have only been fathomless black depths. He wants, that much can be traced like the raised lines of Braille, though that want is riddled with the inability to name itself. He has only the vaguest idea of what moving further would entail, after a certain point.

But then none of that dampens the percolating sparks lighting need behind his eyes, doesn't keep him from finally drawing his hand around Charles' and holding on what he can tell is probably tight enough to hurt. (And even then he can't make himself let go, or loosen his grip; in years he has had nothing that would lessen him by its loss; if he has this, if that can possibly be allowed, then he'll keep it as ferociously as he has clung to his own self-preservation.) "First you insult me and then you say that, I--"

He sounds a little dazed, but there are worse things. "I don't know what to do with you."

Which...is a question, isn't it. Stroking his thumb over the pulse in Charles' wrist actually makes him shiver, eyes lidding, and he has a strange disjointed second to wonder how something so small can unravel him so much. "You tell me. Tell me what you want, I need to hear it."

[mentis]

His inhale is sharp and quick, mind turning to Erik's like leaves to the sun, his body following suit until there's but a breath of air between them. His pulse jumps and his gaze drops to his mouth, then follows the lines in his skin that might have been laughter marks in another life, holds his gaze a beat. His free hand settles soft at Erik's waist, not a firm grip, not yet - just the barest insistence of Charles want.

He makes a noise, soaks against the corners of Erik's thoughts like the tide, voice as low as the sea, "A great many things, Erik. I am fairly certain I couldn't settle for anything but all of you."

Thumb pressing against his hipbone through the fabric of cloth, smirk turning mischevious all at once because this is Charles and the beating of his heart might crash it's way out of his chest but he has a chance here.

"But I'll start easy, mm?" Tipping his chin up, "Kiss me."

[violenthearted]

If as much as Erik's name can induce a churning spire of confusion, then his country of origin is the kicked up debris of a dust storm in a desert; he would be the first to tell a person that he has no home. He never thinks of himself as German anymore; before he could call himself a mutant there was no nationality he could sink his hands into, and he only called himself by his faith when he was using it as a weapon.

But some things don't change. Germans, as a people, love sentiment, they love wide sweeping arias and dense heavy poetry, they love words that encompass the meaning of a thousand ideas. Erik has no love for the place he was born, the place the man he could have been died behind barbed wire, but there is something of that in him, a love of words and acts infused with meaning, so instead of crushing Charles' entire self to him the way he wants to, when Erik bends to him (as he must), he cradles the lines of Charles' jaw between the wide span of his hands and kisses him with the lightness of rain falling on water.

If it was a kiss that stayed that way it'd be sweet--chaste, nearly, but sweet--although of course it doesn't. He can feel the race of Charles' pulse on the roof of his mouth like sparks in his teeth, can taste day old worry and lighting that shivers on his tongue, and this is Charles, who Erik has wanted so badly it's settled like blood in a bruise. So chastity is in...fairly short supply, Erik sliding one hand down over the curve of Charles' neck and spine to plant it flat at the small of his back, mouth moving in bursts like the flare of flash bombs.

[mentis]

There is something infinitely sweet about the moment, something that turns his head and makes him want to twist the two of them together like the falling of leaves. Charles lets Erik kiss him the way he need for a moment, a heartbeat more, affection spilling from lips while his hands settle around the ever endearing shape of his waist. That might be something he'll bring up later, the way Erik is built like a greyhound, how the vulnerable looking parts of him caught Charles first - hands itching to slide against his spine, lips to his ribs, the map of the man that burst into his life. But Charles is, well, there are things that he craves and this is one of them and he won't interrupt that by speaking when he can just as easily press up against him.

It's the barest brush of his body but it does enough, his eyes closed and close enough to feel the heat. He's careful not to box Erik against the counter, cautious because as much as he trusts this is what he wants there still needs to be an out. He's not sure of Erik's past when it comes to this - to something other than the infernal scream he was at the beginning - but if Charles' pulse is pounding it doesn't mean he can't be gentle with it. So he keeps his weight to the toes and hums a little, a quiet, earnest sound. What he loses in not communicating he makes up for in the bubble of his thoughts, not pushing but very much there. It brings with itself a certain level of soft fondness - how warm the world had felt the day they broke away from everyone to talk in the grounds, the burn of interest from nightly chess games, the spark of pride when Erik had moved the satellite.

It's a catalogue of Charles' heady descent into his need for Erik and fingers curl against his shirt, anchor themselves there as he breathes.

"You -" A smile, a slow blink and he's breaking through the haze to laugh, delightedly molding closer, "You could have said. You say everything you mean."

And Charles feels everything which might explain the way even though he's trying so hard to keep his ground, to let Erik stand his, his touch keeps shifting as though to keep Erik solid and real.

[violenthearted]

Erik snorts a breath-stripped ripple of laughter at that, palming the back of Charles' neck and curling fingers into the v where his hair hits; it feels impossibly daring for as light a touch as it is. "As if it were so easy."

He smooths a hand down Charles' spine as if he's counting his vertebrae like someone else would count pearls, each more precious than their own weight. "I couldn't lose you. And before you're moved to call me anything so unflattering as 'idiot,' may I point out that only the one of us can read minds."

Which is only a little unfair, Erik has kept this as far under his skin as possible, as if desire lived in his marrow. He ducks his head again to kiss Charles on the mouth, not tentative, but still testing, tongue tracing the seam of Charles' lips in a wet, voltiac thrill that shoots a bolt of liquid heat into the pit of his stomach and kindles there like slick flames racing along a spill of oil. That combined with Charles' new and bravely tried nearness alone could shake him apart, he thinks, and he's nearly self-mocking at his own poetry. He's rarely had time for sex; with rare exceptions he has expressed it as a biological need, something to be dealt with, fed like hunger and forgotten.

But Charles knows him, down to the clutch of anger that filters his blood like so much iron, knows him and still wants; it doesn't belittle anyone who came before him, but he is the first person Erik has never had to lie to, and that means something. He can't seem to decide where to put his hands, so he settles on just completing the shift that hooks them together from shoulder to thigh, palm back at Charles' neck as Erik buries his cheek in the crown of his hair, some dark and incomprehensible noise muffled there. "I refuse to keep carrying on like teenagers in the goddamn kitchen," he mutters, "I do have some dignity left."

Blasphemy. What you hath wrought, Charles.

[mentis]

"Dignity be damned," Charles murmurs, arms circling Erik's waist and tucking his fingertips to where the fabric bunches up for a moment. He breathes in, tastes the tang of metal on his tongue and lets his smile curve up, "I care very little about it right now, Erik. In fact, all I do give a damn about is making up for lost time."

It's teasing, feather light as he leans back, hooks his fingers now in the waist of his shirt, power on the heels of his feet as though he might start dragging Erik back with him. Maybe he will. Because Charles has been careful not to pry with him in regards to their friendship - one does not press an palm into already cracked glass if they don't want to end up cut to the wrist and this sudden swoop of understanding, of need, it coils in his stomach and he takes a step back. It's small, but he tugs lightly, impish smile lighting up his face.

"You're the one guarding the castle, darling. You tell me where you want to discuss your dignity."

[violenthearted]

Erik gives Charles what may be characterized as one of his uh, fondly withering looks at this, and disengages Charles' hands firmly to wrap one in his longer fingers, more or less stalking down the hall off the kitchen and towing Charles with him.

The room he's staked out is deeply incongruous to Erik, patterned in benign, light florals as it is, but frankly at this second he cares less about the decor than he would if the room were on fire. (Just as a for instance.) Before he actually crosses the threshold though, he does take the trouble to stand pointedly in front of Charles until he can kill the nearest camera with a gesture that's the sharper and more violent cousin of flicking water from his fingers. "Guarded enough for you?" he contends with acciculate interest, eyes sparking dangerously.

It's a largely rhetorical question, considering his next move is to sit on the edge of the bed (still leading Charles as long as he's willing to be led) and center his hands carefully at Charles' hips, looking up at him in--some disbelief. He still expects to wake up at some point, and given the events of the day it doesn't seem all that unlikely. Frankly the only thing that makes this solid, other than the bizarre, heady feeling of skin under his fingers, only separated by far too many yards of fabric, is the fact that this has been the least nightmarish part of his day. "This wasn't in my plans for the day," he says, because if he doesn't he's going to say something weighty enough to crack his own resolve. "If you told me I was dreaming, I'd believe you."

So there it is anyway, that weighty thing; it feels flighty and like so much treacle, but Erik never says anything he doesn't mean.

[mentis]

Charles' laughter is a helpless, light thing as Erik all but drags him down the corridor, a sound that only drifts into a curious breathing as he crushes the camera and pulls him closer. One hand settles on his shoulder, the other drifting to his forehead, the back of his palm smoothed along his companion's furrowed brow.

"I don't doubt that, my friend."

He hums, pushes his fingers gently into Erik's hair with a small grin, the flash of white behind too red lips and it's easy, ridiculously so. "I know, I know, today of all - but I can't help but want to be a little selfish right now."

Because Erik is looking at him in a way that makes Charles feel as though his very essence is written in the lines of his face and his heart twists in yearning. The things he would do for Erik, could be convinced into, have crept into his thoughts the last week. If Charles were anything less than he were he might have laid it all at his feet by now but he has to hope, has to believe that they will work it out, that they can come to some sort of understanding of each other.

Erik is a dangerous thing to want.

And oh, Charles does.

[violenthearted]

Case in point, what they didn't do today furrows Erik's brow further, but then smooths out with a startled look from under his winged-down lashes when Charles touches his hair. The other man will know him well enough to understand that he hasn't forgotten; Erik could no more stop hunting Shaw than he could stop breathing, but this--even if it can't make him forget, it warms him, and he pushes his head into Charles' hand like nothing so much as an insistent cat.

If not one of the great variety; he'd probably fit right in stalking around in the woods with the dire wolves. "You do have me at your leisure," he points out, sounding like this is a complete lie, which it ....sort of is. On one hand Erik's need to control everything in his environment has driven him since he was barely an adult, and that extends to this, but on the other it's pleasing in a way to make himself wait, to watch Charles with eyes like a hungry, lithe, stalking thing, and see what he does, to watch his hands move over Erik like the pass of pale birds.

He flattens a hand on Charles' abdomen and considers the spaces between his own fingers, pushes just enough to feel muscle push back. "What do you want from me? If you say 'everything'," he warns, cajoling and teasing all at once, "I won't take you seriously. I'm not a machine."

Ahem. "But," and there's little of that mockery left in his voice, gentle as it was, "there is nothing I won't give you, not if you ask for it."

[mentis]

"Well, I'm glad you didn't say mercy Erik, your mind is already full of enough of that -."

But he smiles wide enough for his cheek to dimple, a flush settling high on his skin and his eyes sparking with something that might be amusement and might be something else. Lust snaps in his veins like the crackle of fire and he breathes in, swaying a little closer because how can he deny that? How can he when he is being offered so much. He shifts until his hands are on Erik's face, his mouth pressing a deep and hot kiss to his lips, chasing it with cousins of the same action. He can't help himself, thumb swiping the cut of his cheekbones and his tongue haunting the bottom of his lip like he has always been there.

"Are you sure?" A soft earnest hush spilled once more into the shell of his ear, "I can ... I can wait for you all you need me to. Knowing is enough."

Because he wants hands on skin and the frantic application of new love but - well, how can he be sure without asking? How can he know he's not colouring Erik's mind with his own. So he asks.

[violenthearted]

Should Charles give voice to that particular concern, he may be treated to yet another of Erik's disbelieving laughs; if that hasn't happened before there's no reason it should start now. He believes in the sanctity of his own mind to the degree of exactly the arrogance he's capable of, that if his thoughts weren't his own, he would know.

When Charles makes to pull away Erik makes a rough dissatisfied sound and reels him in again, hand on the back of his neck in what's clearly the development of ritual. Kissing him now seems like the swallow of one mouthful when he's starving; he has always known exactly what he needs to get by and taken no more, but Charles makes him a glutton. Erik could chase the light-lined hollows and corners of his mouth for hours and not want to move from exactly where he is right now, which--frankly, is exactly how he considers answering, but he's aware that Charles is treating him like something breakable, which under the circumstances seems almost laughable.

To Erik, anyway, who sometimes doesn't know himself as well as he thinks he does. He doesn't flush, since God knows he won't give away any more signs of inexperience than he already has (it is different, the way Charles feels in his arms, his slender muscle where Erik is used to soft curvature, but it barely matters, less than he thought it would); instead his mouth creases in determination, eyes turning steely gray. "I may not have your worlds of experience," he ....teases, of Charles the tramp, "but I am quite sure I can teach myself."

His eyes light with what is unabashed devilry, and he sits back on the bed braced by his arms to consider Charles from that angle. "But then you are the distinguished professor, of the two of us. I suppose it depends if you trust me to follow your lead."

Considering Erik has been doing that the entire time they've been training, and he never does as much for anyone else, the possibilities seem both limitless and filthy.

[mentis]

The bolt of desire that strikes through him is something completely unexpected, makes his hands twitch at his side and his mouth part as he breathes. He feels shaken by it - as though he's once again the same young man who thought this was the highest form of art. He takes Erik in, the languid but powerful way he moves, the teasing way his expression has bent. Charles could just as easily drop into the v of his legs and show him just how much he wants this, he could. But then again, Erik's purr of a voice is talking about teaching and lighting up all the baser parts of his brain. Charles wants to run hands over Erik's skin the same way he does with his library ( reverent and greedy ) and so he moves.

He doesn't have the predator's grace that Erik does but this isn't meant to be as though he's hunting. It's natural to press his knee to the mattress before sliding up to straddle Erik, hands once again cupping his face. The balancing act between them should say something about them in entirety but he doesn't care, just leans in to kiss him as hard as he might, the filthy edge of his teeth catching Erik's plush lower lip between them and tugging ever so slightly.

Hand curling into the hair at the back of Erik's nape, burying his fingers to the knuckles and licking into his mouth with a single-minded need, Charles punctuates every breath with words, lets them loose when he's not trying to climb inside.

"You have no idea the things I want to teach you, Erik," Nuzzling his jaw, "I don't think you have the slightest inkling of what you're letting yourself in for."