kore_logs | everything's weird and we're always in danger

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everything's weird and we're always in danger

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.

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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."

"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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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."

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."

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.

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.

"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."

Edited 2013-03-04 23:26 (UTC)

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.

Edited 2013-03-05 02:40 (UTC)

"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.

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."

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."

Edited 2013-03-05 18:50 (UTC)

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.

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."

"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?"

Edited 2013-03-05 19:49 (UTC)

"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."

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."

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."

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.

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.

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.

Edited 2013-03-05 23:47 (UTC)

"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."

Edited 2013-03-05 23:59 (UTC)

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.

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.

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."

"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.

Edited 2013-03-06 20:58 (UTC)

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.

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."

Edited 2013-03-07 12:28 (UTC)

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