"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?"