Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/377830.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage, Rape/Non-Con, Major_Character
      Death
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      X-Men:_First_Class_(2011)_-_Fandom
  Relationship:
      Erik_Lehnsherr/Charles_Xavier, Charles/Everybody
  Character:
      Raven_Darkholme, Nick_Fury, Jean_Grey, Moira_MacTaggert, Alex_Summers,
      Hank_McCoy, Tony_Stark, Steve_Rogers, Emma_Frost, Sebastian_Shaw, Phil
      Coulson, Angel_Salvadore, Jarvis_(Iron_Man_movies)
  Additional Tags:
      Prostitution, Kushiel's_Legacy_-_Freeform, Alternate_Universe_-_Fusion,
      inexplicit_references_to_past_rape, Espionage
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-04-07 Updated: 2012-08-22 Chapters: 7/? Words: 19416
****** By The Edge of Your Blade ******
by fourfreedoms_(orphan_account)
Summary
     Charles is the great shame of the house of courtesans he was born
     into. Unable to write poetry or compose music or make grand works of
     art, he is deemed a complete failure. Resigned his entire life to
     being relegated to a dusty corner, a shadowy figure purchases him and
     gives him a purpose and a prickly bodyguard with more than a slight
     objection to Charles' chosen profession.
     Involving sword fights, unabashed mind reading, characters from the
     entire Marvel universe, and a metric ton of porn.
Notes
     This story is a lot of people's fault. I begged for people to stop me
     (proof positive: here), and yet I find myself 15,000 words in the
     hole and still going. A lot of people helped me brainstorm this whole
     universe out, most prominently memphis86 and regala_electra, who
     aren't even in this fandom, but who thought Nick Fury would make the
     bestest Delaunay ever. And to rosekay, who listened, bleary eyed and
     hungover at brunch, and was somehow amused rather than appalled.
     So er, yeah. Thanks!
***** Prologue *****
They have a guest, one the Dowayne is desperate to impress, if the commotion
and the fear of disappointment that lingers all over the house is anything to
go by. Patrons have been cleared out on short notice, some being extracted from
their beds nearly mid-coitus, and others firmly told to turn around at the
door. Charles is to be kept out of the way, he can sense that thought in more
than one head.
He sighs, but even as he feels bitter disappointment he knows that it’s his
perfect chance to escape to Night’s Doorstep. They don’t come often enough to
pass up and if he’s supposed to be out of sight, nobody will know he’s gone. He
calculates that it’ll be at least three hours before they gather themselves
together to send the house guards after him. Nevertheless, he dithers for a
moment, because the whispers and shadows in people’s minds of this mystery
visitor intrigue him.
But he also knows he’ll be in for a thrashing if he’s caught underfoot, and
worse, his mother’s unsurprised displeasure. Charles has managed to fit an
entire lifetime of disappointing her into his few years. It is hardly deterrent
enough when she’ll also find it in herself to be histrionically mortified when
he is caught off the grounds. Again.
What he should do is return to the nursery and wait until all the excitement
has died down. His curiousity has assuredly never been rewarded before.
An adept approaches unexpectedly two corridors away. Her mind accidentally
reveals that she was given the sole task of ensuring Charles didn’t create some
ruckus. This, more than anything, decides him. He makes for the kitchen, with
its unimpressive side door that often goes unused and rarely watched. He has to
duck behind an urn to avoid the Dowayne’s second, Matthieu, a fearsome large
man fancied to be the best silversmith in Terre D’Ange. His skill with silver
is only surpassed by his ability to insult Charles’ in the most imaginative
ways. For somebody who prizes propriety as much as he does, it’s a surprise to
find him dashing down the hall at a run. It occurs to him that someone from the
royal family must be coming--surely no one else would merit this level of
upheaval. House Eglantine has been visited a few times in his life by a minor
royal cousin or two, but it’s never created such turbulence. But he’s already
decided he isn’t going to investigate. At least he knows, with his few stolen
hours, he’ll have fun with Raven in Night’s Doorstep.
He nearly stumbles into a cloaked man already waiting at the door with his back
turned. This is not altogether unusual, many who come to the Night Court prefer
to do so under the cover of anonymity. But still curious, because this can only
be the guest that the Dowayne and her second are currently eagerly waiting for
in the receiving hall.
Charles pauses, sticking close to the wall. The man takes off his hood,
revealing dark skin and one eye covered with a rakish eye patch.
“What ridiculousness. That the academy could appoint a man who yet believes the
earth is flat? That this remains a prevailing view in the minds of the public.
‘Surely, Fury, if it were round, we would be conscious of being turned
sideways! I know what my eyes see.’ If it were flat would we not see clear to
the Orient? And yet, the Himalayas do not appear before my sight! Should pay
people to heckle him at his next oration with that Archimedes text. But which
one is it?”
The thought is so clear and decisive, as if the man was grouching aloud,
Charles doesn’t realize it’s a thought until he’s already trapped himself.
“You won’t find it in Archimedes’s work, sir. It was the Hellene, Eratosthenes.
who first proved the earth was round--” the man snaps around quickly, eyes
alighting on Charles with such an intensity that the words die on his tongue,
“--as the distance the naked eye can see follows directly the curvature of the
earth...”
He knows from the assessing look on the man’s face that he has revealed
everything he has tried so desperately to hide. It is the first time since he
discovered thoughts in his head that were not his own that he has ever slipped
up.
He backs up against the wall, wondering what action the man will take. His
expression gives away nothing and his thoughts, so easily organized and formed
that they sounded like casual mutterings, are now shuttered away.
“Nicholas! The side door, really? You are always playing such games!” the
Dowayne interrupts, sweeping imperiously into the small corridor, Matthieu only
a few steps behind. “Oh, Charles!” she says, startled, before hiding it
instantly with a smooth mask of disinterest. Behind that cardsharp’s face is a
seething mass of outrage. Charles attempts to make himself smaller fall sadly
short of the mark.
“The lad is quite intriguing,” this Nicholas speaks, a slight smile curling
about his lips. Charles’s eyes dart over to him, wondering feverishly what he
means to do.
“To be sure he has very lovely blue eyes and is quite an acrobat, but he has
absolutely no aptitude for anything constructive. Always mucking about in the
dirt, hiding in the library, or running off to Night’s Doorstep.” She’s
babbling. Charles has never felt her so discomfited. “We will likely have to
sell his marque to Cereus or Orchis. Certainly Dahlia won’t take him.” She
pauses for breath, and for the first time in his life he feels something like
compassion in her, but it is quickly stifled. “Shame really, his mother is
Sharon nó Eglantine.”
Charles drops his eyes, cheeks burning. His failures, compounded with the name
of the greatest playwright in the realm, seem that much more stark. He can feel
Matthieu’s chilly disgust and the Dowayne’s stinging anger, and from this
stranger who knows his secret, absolutely nothing.
“How much?” Nick says.
Everything grinds to a halt.
“Pardon?” the Dowayne says, blinking in surprise.
“How much for his marque?”
Charles stares at him, open-mouthed. Nobody has ever wanted him, ever. Except
Raven, and that is not the same.
Matthieu growls, “You can’t be serious? Come now, Fury, none of your jesting.”
The Dowayne holds up her hand, assessing Nicholas with new eyes. He can hear
her realization that something about Charles has caught Nicholas’s eye, and if
Nicholas, of all people, is interested in a boy like Charles there must be some
worth to him. The price she names is so steep it makes Charles’ stomach drop
out.
He expects Nicholas to point out that she just called Charles entirely
worthless, but Fury’s smile widens and he says, “Done.”
The Dowayne nods and holds out her hand, flinty gaze sweeping over Charles. She
has internally concluded that she made a deal worthy of any adept of Briony,
and if she is suddenly cheery as she shakes Nicholas’s hand, her face never
shows it. “Shall we attend to other business?” she asks and Nicholas nods. They
leave Charles behind, disappearing into the recesses of the house.
Charles hears suddenly and very clearly: ”I would’ve paid much more for you.”
It scares him, and he is not sure if he can trust the surge of terrible
kindness beyond the words. What use could Nicholas have for him? He knows--like
he has known his entire life that he will serve at other people’s pleasure--
that nobody will allow the man to take him before he is deemed ready. He knows
the word for it--rape--but that is something that happens in other places, for
here in Terre D’Ange rape is a crime beyond treason. But he is still
frightened--he has never heard of a servant of Naamah being bought by a private
citizen.
***** An Interminable Wait *****
Chapter Summary
     Charles leaves House Eglantine for the last time to become the ward
     of Nick Fury.
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
He does not see hide nor hair of Nicholas Fury for two years after that. The
whole transaction could’ve been dream, but for the sumptuous presents Fury
sends every year on his name day. The first was an edition of Archimedes’s
canon bound in butter-soft leather, and Charles knew Fury must’ve been teasing
him. But it’s the first book Charles could ever call his own. The second was a
little less practical--a jeweled collar that the house servants festooned on
him when he served as a Joie bearer at the midwinter masque.
Charles has tried to seek Fury’s mind out, as he sometimes does out of
masochistic curiosity for his mother, but though he knows Fury is well within
his range, he feels nothing.
“I don’t know why you’re so fascinated by him,” Raven says, nicking him an
apricot from a fruit stall.
“I can’t explain it to you if you don’t know,” Charles replies, face burning.
His immediate impulse is to put the apricot back, but Raven is already tugging
him along. He tucks it hurriedly into his pocket. “His mind isn’t like any I’ve
ever felt. Armored somehow.”
Raven looks at him, brows lowered. “Are you sure you should trust him?”
Charles looks down at his feet. “As sure as I was that I could trust you.” He
glances over at her, an unremarkable blonde girl, beautiful in the way that all
D’angeline children are beautiful. But it is not truth, for she is just like
him in the way that they are not like anyone else. Beneath that apple-cheeked
face is blue skin and the gold eyes of her Tsingani forebears. She looks
nothing at all like a Tsingano in this form she prefers, but since she looks
nothing like a Tsingano in life, Charles supposes that is right.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have trusted me either,” she says softly.
He doesn’t say you’re my dearest and only friend, because her fierce and
unsentimental heart will only laugh it off. So he says, “But I did.”
For two years the people of House Eglantine have wondered what it is Fury could
want with an adept of Naamah for his very own. Charles has wondered the same
thing. What he has gleaned from the minds around him don’t give him any
answers. Charles is going to be ten in two weeks and then he will be sent to
live with Fury.
In two weeks he supposes he will know. And for all his bravado before Raven, he
is scared.
*
When Fury’s carriage is sent to fetch him he reads his servant’s gratitude and
loyalty to their master, but mostly they think of simple things--polishing
their shoes, supper, the cheapest place to cadge wine.
His mother did not come to say goodbye. She sent a letter from her salon,
written in the obvious unfurnished hand of her secretary. The wild rose scented
missive claimed that she was proud of him. Charles doesn’t even have to read
her to know it’s a lie.
But the day was not without its gifts either. Charles could only passably play
a lute, and not even eke out that much for a pretty poetic verse, and had ever
been called the bane of everyone’s existence. But for some reason he was
summoned to the Dowayne’s chambers for an unexpected farewell. The Dowayne
looked at him with some fondness before she handed him a spray of eglantine
roses.
“You know Charles, in case you ever doubt, even if you did not fit here, your
mischief would have made you a lovely adept of Orchis.”
She meant it with a kindness, but Charles had only ever wanted to be part of
the beautiful creative machine of Eglantine, of smiths and wrights and artists.
But some types of genius are more prized than others, and his love of the
library and the way things worked and how white flowers crossbred with pink
flowers still turned out pink were not a part of it. He is thankful at least
that Fury wants him, rather than to be fobbed off onto Orchis’s hands to see if
they could make anything of him.
Before long they’re pulling up at a townhouse not far from the palace and
Charles is bored. These minds have yielded nothing of interest.
Fury waits on the steps with another girl of an age with Charles. She has
pretty limpid grey eyes and a down-turned rosebud mouth. All Charles gets from
her are uncomplicated good thoughts. She is so sweet, after his life spent in a
brothel surrounded constantly by salacious fancies, Charles feels a sudden urge
to retch.
The girl smiles at him and kisses him on the cheek. No touch in the Court of
the Nightblooming Flowers is wasted and Charles who feels very keenly that this
is a wasted touch has to prevent himself from flinching.
“So, Charles, what did you observe?” Fury asks.
“What?” Charles’s instinct is to read him to find out his meaning, but he runs
up against that same mental barrier he encountered years ago.
Fury smiles like he knows what Charles attempted to do. “About your ride here,”
he prompts.
“Ah,” Charles pauses wondering if he should even bother to hide the extent of
his abilities or if letting them be known can serve as some kind of defense. He
gets nothing of any kind from Fury or good sweet Moira, who is thinking that
she has never seen eyes as blue as his before. He sighs, coming to a decision.
“The carriage is not your own, nor the horses. Your driver was unfamiliar with
them. However, the people were all yours, suggesting that you must have a
carriage. And why send a carriage that is not your own if you have a carriage?
I can only assume you wanted nobody to know that you were taking me from
Eglantine.”
Fury looks surprised, but still he asks. “And?”
“And?” Charles repeats, taken aback.
The footmen were all trained how to fight. The footmen were all trained how to
fight. The footmen were all trained how to fight. He hears Moira thinking over
and over at him. She doesn’t know his ability, she just wants him to say the
right thing. It serves the same purpose. With her knowledge he sees it now. The
scars on their hands, their stances, the hint of a weapon beneath a doublet.
Charles blushes. He would never have noticed. “I know the answer you want, but
I did not arrive at it by myself,” he says honestly, eyes darting over to
Moira, suspecting Fury would know if he tried to play it off as his own idea.
Is Fury like him?
“Hmm,” Fury says, tone inscrutable. “How many people can you read?”
“Everyone,” Charles drops his eyes, “except you.”
“I was taught to reign in my thoughts, but I suspect you could read me if you
wanted.”
Charles shakes his head. “It’s like running into a wall.”
“Have you tried to break through the wall?” Fury asks, face unreadable.
“It would hurt you,” Charles says, and he knows this without a doubt. He feels
defensive, so used to people pointing out his many and varied shortcomings.
“Charles, all of this, I fear, will hurt,” he smiles grimly and turns away.
“What do you know of me?”
Charles thinks carefully about what to say. “I know that you were once a high
ranked general in the princes’ armies, and you had the ear of John Grey. You
disseminated information on the Princess Consort that was...inconvenient. She
called for your death, but to save you, Grey stripped you of your post and
forbid you to bear weapons. The prince is dead, so is his princess, and still
you cannot bear steel.”
Moira starts like this is news to her and the feedback Charles gets from her
proves that it is. He looks at her and then back at Nick Fury in askance. “But
this is what everybody of an age with you knows. I do not know what you want
with me.”
“So, the reach of the Night Court ends there,” he says softly. “You do not know
what I want with you, because you do not know what I am.”
Charles is tired of word games and he brings his fingertips to his forehead and
finds the answer in Moira. “You are the King’s spymaster. You mean to train and
use me as a spy. But I do not understand, I thought I was to be sworn as a
servant of Naamah.”
Nick smiles like Charles has at last pleased him and Moira’s eyes widen, she
taps her own forehead like she should be able to feel him there. “You will have
to learn not to bring your fingertips to your forehead. Otherwise you risk
loudly telegraphing your intentions to the entire world. But you are correct on
both counts. As an adept you and Moira will be able to get closer to the
citizens of this great nation than anybody else. With your ability there will
be nothing they can keep safe from you. But,” he pauses, voice turning grave,
“you may say no, the choice, ultimately, lies with you.”
*
Charles does not say no.
He spends the next three years learning languages--Caerdicci, Cruithne,
Skaldic, and Habiru, until he thinks his head will burst.
“I don’t understand why I have to know all of this,” he says, watching Moira
happily babble away in Hellene. “People don’t really think in something so
formal or concrete as language.”
Fury flicks his ear. “You will not always be able to rely on reading people’s
minds, Charles.”
And testing his abilities. Charles learns to break through Fury’s mental
defenses, to carry separate conversations out loud and in other’s heads.
“This will be useful if you ever need help from Coulson,” Fury says, gesturing
to their silent bodyguard. Coulson nods and disappears behind a pillar.
Fury has him practicing influencing people’s decisions, whispering little
suggestions and commands. It’s not always easy, at first he can only give
people mild compulsions to do things, a little like getting a melody stuck in
their head, but slowly he gets the hang of it. One day pushing at cook to make
the biscuits he loves so much he finds himself inhabiting her eyes, walking her
towards the larder and the stores of flour. He is so surprised he falls down
the stairs.
“Charles, what in the seven hells?” Fury asks, running out of his study at
Cook’s scream of distress to find Charles slumped at the bottom of the steps.
“I--I took control of-of Cook,” he says weakly, “I didn’t mean to.”
Fury turns to look over his shoulder where Cook is screaming about demons and
being comforted by anxious parlour maids.
“She did not like the sensation, I take it,” Fury says dryly.
Charles shakes his head, full of guilt.
Fury helps him up. “Very well, Charles, you will have to make her forget.”
Charles freezes. He’s peered inside and had things come to him unbidden, tried
to give ideas and make people see things different than they actually were, but
he’s never explicitly tampered with anything he found inside a mind.
“Are you sure?” he whispers.
Fury’s face is hard and when Charles tries to read him he thrusts him out with
a firm push. “Yes.”
That is the day Charles realizes the terrible strength of his power.
Sometimes he finds Fury watching him like he is not sure what monster he is
creating, but Charles never senses anything in his thoughts that give him away.
After reducing those precious three seconds of cook’s time to a blurry blank he
escapes the house and goes to Night’s Doorstep to see Raven. She steals him hot
pastries and morphs into various people who live in the neighborhood to make
him feel better. “Are we the only ones like this?” he asks her.
“Someone must have taught Fury how to prevent you from seeing his thoughts,”
she points out, running her fingers through his hair.
“Yes,” he says.
*
When Charles turns thirteen, Fury hires an instructor for an entirely new kind
of education. Angel Salvadore is one of the most celebrated courtesans of the
realm. After making her marque in a record two years, she married and settled
down on a small country estate, starting a modest and informal salon of her
own. In a way that should no longer surprise, Fury has enough clout to get her
to agree to set aside her own pursuits to teach them what they need to know in
order to become true servants of Naamah.
Moira does not like the lessons at all, Charles is not surprised, but he was
born for this, it’s in his blood, and something inside him stretches like wings
unfurling.
“Ah, Charles, Fury tells me you were bound for Orchis before he purchased your
marque, but I do believe you would have done Cereus just as proud,” Angel tells
him after asking him to read a select passage in the Trois Milles Joies. It is
unexpected praise. Cereus is the first and the greatest of the houses.
Charles ducks his head to conceal a blush. He knows he will be able to make
patrons see and perceive him as whatever their hearts may wish, but that will
come with a three day pounding headache, and there is something in actually
being that desire and not a simulacrum of it. Moira squeezes his hand. “You are
beautiful, Charles,” she whispers.
She is so good, so absent of petty thought, that it nearly burns.
*
By the time Charles is sixteen, he is nearly ready to fly out of his skin from
eagerness for his first assignation, but Fury waits...for something, Charles
cannot figure out what. Even Moira, who is filled with a needling anxiety over
it, begins to chafe at the restriction. Charles feels useless and angry and he
spends a lot of time running away to Night’s Doorstep and being dragged back by
Coulson.
“I’m not sure why you’re so obsessed, it’s just sex,” Raven says over a tankard
of ale.
Charles snorts. “I have spent the last three years learning everything there is
to know about it and repeatedly watching others have it and spending time
around people who think of nothing, nothing besides it. How can I be anything
but obsessed?”
“Sounds unhealthy,” she says with a laugh. “You might burst!”
“Ha-bloody-ha,” he says and lays his head upon the table.
She buys him another drink. She’s become quite flush recently. Charles suspects
she is behind the recent string of break-ins in the merchant quarter, but he
can’t tell, because he promised long ago never to read her mind.
“Hello, lovely,” a pretty dark-haired girl Charles has seen at this pub before
says. She creeps fingers up his shoulder and with the touch he knows she means
to take him to the livery next door and tumble him down in the hay. For one
moment he honestly considers it, but Raven crashes into the girl, spilling ale
all over her. She shrieks and the moment is lost.
Charles smiles and excuses himself.
When he gets back that evening Fury summons him into the study. He does not
look pleased. “Coulson told me you had an interesting opportunity tonight.”
Charles blushes. “How does he do that?” he mutters. He hadn’t even sensed
Coulson’s presence.
Fury snorts. “He was a Cassiline brother until he was fifteen.”
“Coulson?” Charles says, blinking at him. He has never had the slightest whiff
of it from Coulson’s thoughts. “But he doesn’t...”
“He broke his vow of celibacy and was cast out. It was his greatest shame. I
doubt he would linger on it overmuch.”
Charles mulls over that. “Am I in trouble?”
“Why? For running out to Night’s Doorstep? You’ve been doing that since you
were six years old.”
Charles does not drop his eyes, although he wants to. “No, for the other
thing.”
Fury sits down behind his great oaken desk and sighs. “I have decided it is
time for Moira’s debut, and in turn, your own.”
Charles breathes and it feels like the first breath he’s had in a long time. He
wants to sink to the floor and thank the gods.
“You must forgive me, Charles, I was--I was raised with a different conception
on when a person is ready than you were.” It is the first time that Charles has
ever heard him sound uncertain. Charles finds himself crossing the room and
pressing a kiss to Fury’s forehead.
“Oh stop,” Fury says, thrusting him away. Charles smiles and mockingly dusts
himself off.
“Do not linger on it overmuch,” Charles replies, repeating Fury’s own words
back to him. “You have been good to me.”
*
Moira’s debut is the first party Charles has attended where he isn’t just a
part of the scenery. He is given champagne and while it makes the edges of his
control go a bit fuzzy, he finds he likes it.
A tall blonde woman with a placid face and striking features walks over to him.
She looks him over with clear interest. Charles blushes and she laughs. “So,
now I see why I’m no longer invited over to Fury’s house.” She holds out her
hand for him to kiss. “Emma Frost.”
Charles bends over it when her voice blossoms in his mind. You are quite a
prize indeed.
Charles starts and drops her hand, she laughs and chucks him under the chin.
This has be the person that taught Fury to armor his thoughts. So then, how was
it you came to be hiding in Eglantine house of all places?
Charles has a sudden instinct to hide the depth and breadth of his abilities.
Something about her cold, cut glass mental presence, so at odds with the
brilliant smile upon her face makes his heart race.
My mother is Sharon no Eglantine. He says it as calmly as he can muster,
pretending he doesn’t understand her question. Not that it would matter. He
doesn’t know how he came to be born with such abilities. Why should it matter?
Moira walks into the room at that moment, even if Charles couldn’t see her
through everybody else’s eyes, the sudden hush in the room would tell him.
She’s outfitted like a Hellenic goddess of old, a muse, Terpsichore, Charles
thinks. He has never seen her so confident or striking, but when he reaches out
to her he felt nervous energy pouring off her in waves. Her eyes rove over the
assembled company in a way that seems assessing, but Charles knows it's a
frightened casing of the room. He sighs internally, sensing Emma's cruel
amusement.
Fury had invited nobody to Moira's debut that would shame her. Charles flies
through all their minds, and sees only compassion and awe returned in the face
of Moira's kind grey gaze. He smiles when he comes to the mind who will win the
night. An apple-cheeked man from L'agnace, who had the funds and the desire to
lie with one such as Moira.
Calm yourself. Charles tells her, sending signals from her brain to her heart
to slow its beat. Moira blushes and shivers, like the effect is pleasurable.
Everyone else sees a young woman modest in the face of all the attention.
I didn't know you could do that. She thinks, radiating gratitude.
"She is exquisite," Emma says. "Her virgin price will be quite high."
A few others around them murmur assent.
But then Emma's voice is echoing again in his head: But you and I both know you
are the real pearl.
His eyes slide to her, lips parting. She means to bid on him for his virgin
price, not because she wants to lie with him, but because of what lies in his
skull. It repulses him and it takes everything he has not to back away from
her. Charles must keep a tight lid on his own emotions, for there is nobody
else in the room who can soothe him as he did Moira. Yet he wonders if she
knows, and the thought only amuses her more.
*
Moira returns to Fury's house with a soothed spirit. The man from L'Agnace, the
son of the Comte De Sommerville, had done well by her. Unfortunately she
broadcasts her pleasure and memories all over the house, and Charles cannot do
enough to escape it.
Fury finally finds him in the library, hidden under one of the tables, a seat
cushion pressed to his head. Charles is shaking and hard, unable to seek
release before he has given the gift of his virginity. And while he has been
around people who've had these thoughts before, in the same house even, they
were not minds he was as attuned to as Moira's.
"This is ridiculous, Charles!" Fury says, peering below the table with a grim
face. When Charles groans pitiably and hides his face in his shoulder,
something in him relents, and he crouches down beside him, allowing Charles to
lay head in his lap. It is more tenderness than the gruff Fury has ever shown
him or likely will again. Charles suspects Fury keeps a quota of such moments
so that he does not overfill it.
Charles shivers and mumbles as Moira thinks again of the moment of her climax
while she bathes.
"Why don't you simply tell her?" Fury says, strong fingers unexpectedly gentle
as they card through Charles's hair, much like Raven does.
"I don't want to take it from her," he says, gritting his teeth. The fact that
she was so frightened goes unspoken between them.
Fury brushes a hand down Charles's front with a regretful sigh. "You know, I
might have bid on you myself." Charles stares up at him with cloudy
uncomprehending eyes. Fury smiles that rakish grin. "But you were not meant for
one such as me."
"What do you mean?"
"I have loved once, greatly. It is not within me to accept anything less just
for the novelty."
Moira's thoughts stop assaulting him and Charles sighs, hand clutching
reflexively at Fury's crossed thighs. "Is that why you do this? For your lost
love?"
"Yes."
Fury's eyes cast over the room unseeing and Charles shudders, safe at last in
his own thoughts. "Do not let Lady Emma Frost pay my virgin price," he says,
surprising himself.
Fury looks down at him, inscrutable.
Charles shudders again. "I know I will have to go to her, one day. She may have
taught you your shields, but you cannot trust her. I know you cannot not trust
her."
"Charles…"
"She knows as much," Charles replies, breath steadying. "Do not give her the
first time."
Fury laughs. "She may bid, Charles, probably just to rile me, but she will not
have the funds for you, I think. Unless she means to outbid the blood of the
realm."
"What?" Charles says, pulling himself partially up.
"It has been…made known to me," Fury stops with a weighty pause and Charles
remembers that even though he and Moira have not yet been able to glean
anything, that Fury still has spies in other places. "That Malkin Grey means to
purchase your virgin price for his granddaughter."
"What?" Charles chokes out, reinforcing it with his mind. Fury rubs at his
temples and shoots Charles a withering glance.
"Don’t jest," Charles says. "To have a virgin bed the heir of all of Terre
D'ange? And me?"
"I think that was his reasoning. The Dauphine is a virgin as well."
"But me!" Charles repeats, knowing he sounds quite stupid at this point.
"Charles, you undervalue yourself. I do not make poor investments."
Charles snorts, thinking of his mother who he has not seen now in six years and
who has made no attempt to rectify that either.
Fury shakes his head at him in fond exasperation. In one of Fury's rare moments
of unguardedness, he feels Fury wondering how many times they will have to have
this conversation. "Do you know aught of your father?"
"No," Charles says, biting the syllable off. He has never looked in his
mother's mind. Although it is said no child can be born in Terre D'ange
unbidden, Charles has always had the sense he was the lone unexpected birth. He
hadn't wanted to look to find out.
"He was Brian Xavier de Perigeux," Fury says, naming the liege lord of Siovale.
Charles nearly laughs, but for the serious look in Fury’s eyes. That he is an
unwanted bastard of a lord is not unbelievable, many in the Night Court were.
That he is the son of the lord of all Siovale is ridiculous.
"Even if Sharon could not see your obvious worth, it does not mean he wouldn’t
have," Fury says. "You are very like him." Charles stares at him incredulously
and Fury brusquely shoves at his head. "Word has spread about you, Charles, or
rather, I have spread it. When the Dauphine heard of how you were often found
blowing up things in the kitchens or hiding pets in the nursery to study, she
asked for you."
Charles rolled his eyes and rolled off Fury to hide his face in the couch
cushion. "That will never leave me behind, will it?"
Fury chuckles and swats at his behind with a little more force than necessary.
"Nope, I'm afraid never. Now, you appear much improved. Get up, you must stop
hiding in the library."
Charles groans. "Moira has finally fallen asleep, thank all the gods."
"It will not be long now," Fury says with a pointed look and gets to his feet.
He disappears to attend to whatever it is he does behind closed doors and a
closed mind that Charles cannot see.
*
Even though Charles knows the outcome of his Debut, he finds himself awfully
nervous. He feels quite bad for the way he dismissed Moira's nerves and then he
reasons with himself that he would not be so damned jittery if he wasn't about
to be purchased as the future monarch of the realm's first lover.
Fury also didn't bother to outfit him anything near so elaborate as Moira's
diaphanous hellenic robes. He had the maidservants dress Charles in low slung
black riding breaches and boots, and absolutely nothing else. Charles had felt
woefully under-attired much to Fury’s amusement.
"Please, Charles," he said, "It wouldn't do to make them think you've already
been bought and paid for. Best to give them a taste. Set the sharks swimming."
"I have never been near a horse in my life," Charles had replied, put out, to
the maidservants titters.
"No matter, young master," one of them said, a hand hovering just short of his
shoulder. Charles can read lust all over the room and it startles him. Fury's
raised brows tell him he knows exactly what Charles is thinking. She completes
the sentence, "Nobody will notice."
Neither Jean, the Dauphine, nor her grandfather, the king, are in attendance,
and as the bidding starts Charles begins to think that Fury was mistaken. Emma
is of course easily spotted in all her pale blonde glory, and other high ranked
nobles that Charles only knows by description through Fury's teachings are
milling about. He is surprised by how many former adepts--men and women who
have made their marques and are now free to be with whomever they please--have
come.
The bidding goes quite high and then a man in the blue and silver of House Grey
steps forward, and announces a steep price. Everybody around stops in silence.
Moira's voice resounds in his head, thinking loudly and always with the hope
that Charles will hear her. He has waited so long to bid out of respect for
you, she says with a mental laugh, he must know that nobody would dare bid
against the blood.
Charles looks at the proxy for House Grey and accepts it as true. The man
inclines his head with a small smile, like he and Charles are sharing in some
joke. Charles can't help an embarrassed smile in return.
*
Chapter End Notes
     *Malkin Grey is probably more than a few generations before Jean
     Grey's grandfather, but since her actual paternal grandfather is
     unknown, I figured it was easier to assign it to him. Also the man's
     name is a play on Grimalkin. How is that not hilarious?
     *I may have creeped myself out with that whole Nick Fury bidding on
     Charles thing. Ugh, I apologize.
***** Start as you mean to continue *****
Chapter Summary
     Charles finally has his first assignation.
Chapter Notes
     Warning: there is sex with somebody that is not Erik!
See the end of the chapter for more notes
The details are figured out behind closed doors that Charles is not allowed
past. Contracts are signed with much back and forth, Charles can tell from the
boredom radiating from the royal proxy’s mind. After the proxy has left, Fury
waits until Charles is nearly sick with anticipation to reveal the assignation
is to be held in a week’s time.
The very next day he is roused from his bed at some ungodly hour and forced to
the tailors.
“I don’t understand why this is necessary,” Charles complains, mumbling around
a decadent pastry to Angel who’s accompanying him. He’s still bleary-eyed and
barely keeping his head up as the carriage trundles along.
“You’ll be escorting the Dauphine to a court function, we can’t have you
showing up in your velvets all stained with chemical burns.”
“But that would be okay for some other poor jacknob?” Charles asks acidly.
She ignores him and steals away his pastry, chucking it from the carriage. When
Charles protests, she grins and says, “Can’t have you getting pudgy.”
He huffs and yawns hugely, not caring how rude it is. He doesn't know why
everybody is making such a big production out of it, or rather he does, because
he can read their minds, and he finds himself vaguely appalled. Nobody else's
virginity came with as much scrutiny as Jean's apparently.
He tries not to be uncomfortable when the carriage pulls up in front of
Eglantine. Angel doesn’t give him a chance to give voice to his concerns before
she is ushering him through the familiar halls to where the house tailors are
quartered.
Eglantine’s head tailor is myopic and old and has never been overly fond of
Charles, so he’s glad when he has his apprentice take Charles’ measurements.
Charles doesn’t recognize him, although there is a heavy undercurrent of shame
fogged around him that makes Charles want to retch up his hastily eaten half of
pastry.
“I don’t know you,” he says, thickly, trying not to tremble as the boy measures
him for his inseam.
“What?” the boy asks, blinking up at him, his surprise at being addressed
apparent. He is at least three years younger than Charles, and his lack of
courtly manners gives him away as somebody who wasn’t born into the service of
naamah.
“I was fostered here,” Charles explains.
The boy looks taken aback. “It is rare to get servants of naamah who haven’t
made their marque seeking Master Apollinaire’s services.” Charles shrugs. It is
too much to explain that Fury must always have the best. When Charles remains
silent the boy continues, “I was purchased only six months ago.”
“Oh, from what house?” Charles asks.
The boy colors. “From no house.”
Charles doesn’t have any idea what to say. It happens more often than people
realize--parents selling pretty unwanted children into the service for coin--
certainly more often than they get dedicated to the church. But nobody with any
sense of decorum likes to speak of it.
He is almost glad when Master Apollinaire shuffles into the room with a face
like thunder. “I thought I had been well quit of you,” he says darkly to
Charles, looking him up and down with narrowed eyes. He mutters a few things to
himself and then sighs gustily. “Hank, go get some of the silk charmeuse from
the store room.”
They spend hours with Charles up on the little dais, trying very hard not to
shift from foot to foot as Angel and Master Apollinaire argue about designs and
weaves, Hank sent back to the store room for more and more bolts of cloth until
there is a veritable forest of fabric propped up against the walls.
As Angel and the tailor haggle over price, Charles wanders over to the table
where Hank is sketching, his attention so focused he doesn’t notice Charles’
approach. Alongside the typical drawings of sleeve fittings and tucks and
gussets on various outfits he's taken down for Master Apollinaire is a many
jointed winged creation. Hank furiously scribbles notes in an illegible scrawl
next to it, words getting tinier and more cramped as he runs out of space on
the page.
“Is that for somebody’s outfit?” Charles asks, peering over his shoulder.
Hank starts, jolting upright in his seat, and shoves the drawing under a pile
of papers and fabric swatches. Charles guesses not.
“Listen,” he says, “I’m not going to say anything to Master Apollinaire that
your doodling all over your work. Please tell me what that thing with the wings
was.”
“A...a flying machine,” Hank says tentatively, eyes resolutely on the floor.
The sense of shame filling up the room increases. He stutters and stumbles on a
further explanation. “I know it’s just a fancy, I have no idea if I could
really get it to work, but I’ve been studying birds...” he trails off, eyes
shifting despondently back and forth between the drawing and Charles.
“But that’s wonderful,” Charles says. “Show it to me a second time?”
Hank stares at him, clearly unable to believe what Charles is saying.
“Please,” he asks as sweetly as possible.
Hank sighs and fishes the paper out from underneath the pile. Now that he’s
able to see it more clearly, Charles notices that Hank has made notations for
materials and scale, suggesting rice paper and bamboo like the Ch’in use.
“How would you power it?” he asks. “Clockwork?”
Hank smiles, clearly cheered at Charles’ obvious insistence. “That’s my
stumbling point. But the math suggests it’s theoretically sound once I figure
out a system to continuously flap the wings.”
“That’s amazing,” Charles says, running his eyes over the diagram. “Do you have
more?”
“We-ell...” Hank says, suddenly hesitant again.
Charles is prepared to wheedle it out of him when Angel calls to him, “Stop
bothering Master Apollinaire’s apprentice and let’s go.”
“Next time,” Charles says, placing a hand on Hank’s shoulder quickly before
scurrying out after Angel.
*
He regales the entire Fury household with tales of Hank’s diagrams of the
flying machine for days afterwards. Anything to distract from the seemingly
inexhaustible subject of Charles’ upcoming illicit appointment with the crown
princess.
“Enough, I can't think,” Nick finally says behind his daily broadsheet. Moira
only just smothers a laugh at Charles’ put out expression.
“I can’t help it! He’s wasting away in that fusty old buzzard’s shop sewing the
trim on trousers! It’s patently ridiculous!”
“Much like the fact that we require you not to make explosions in your rooms
after dark, I imagine,” Nick says dryly.
Charles even mentions it to Raven when he escapes the many deportment lessons
they’ve been foisting on him like he’s forgotten how to do everything in the
wake of a royal assignation.
“I don’t know what was wrong with him! He was so upset,” Charles tells Raven as
they walk along the river through the wealthy tidy part of town they always
felt too grubby and unwanted to wander through as children. They’ve taken to
exploring other parts of the city, trying to get out from under Coulson’s
dogged protection. “Surely, Master Apollinaire can’t be making him feel that
bad about a couple of stray doodles.”
“You didn’t just read his mind?” Raven asks, pirouetting in a new pair of
slippers Charles bought her with his altogether too generous allowance.
“Of course not!” he replies hotly. “I can’t always help it, Raven, but I do try
not to violate other people’s privacy.”
She sighs. “I know, I know.” Her expression turns thoughtful. “Perhaps we shall
have to affect a rescue!”
“What? Steal him from house Eglantine?”
“Why not? It would serve them right!” She says, clearly warming to the idea.
Charles snorts. “Where would we keep him?”
Raven smiles enigmatically, stroking her chin. “I know many a place.”
Of course she does. Raven has expanded upon the tumbling tricks Charles taught
her after his own lessons and become quite good at all manner of climbing and
sneaking. She’s progressed from mere petty break-ins to a score of one-woman
heists. Charles can sense that Fury is itching to ask him if he can make some
inquiries down in night’s doorstep about the pattern of thefts, but Charles is
glad he never gives in to the impulse, because it would put him in quite a
quandary. Not that he would ever give Raven up, but lying to Nick certainly
wouldn’t make him feel better about it.
“Don’t tell me anything!” Charles protests.
Raven makes a rude noise, leaping up onto one of the stone pillars lining the
river. “And spoil the mystery? Never.”
Charles smiles and jumps up after her. They make altogether too much noise,
laughing and running along the bank. A pair of ladies walking along the bank
with a chaperone at a discreet distance behind glare at them. Though they’re
not children anymore and Charles is no longer covered in dirt and Raven no
longer wears threadbare hand-me-downs, they will never fit into this part of
town. No matter how many royals Charles has to service that will never change.
*
Nevertheless, Coulson, who accompanies Charles to the palace, has to remind him
not to gawk out the windows. It may be the most he’s ever said to him. Charles
contents himself with looking through the coachman's eyes, although he is not
as careful as he could be at masking his presence, and the coachman laughs and
thumps on the roof of the carriage.
"Soon enough, boyo," he calls.
Angel explained earlier in the week when Charles’ dove grey silk outfit arrived
that the King was breaking with tradition by sending him to the Dauphine.
"As a matter of course the dauphine is given her pick of any house in the Night
Court."
Knowing that, Charles doesn't feel any less nervous. He plucks at his doublet
and then tries not to roll his eyes. A missive had been sent to Fury's town
house three days earlier to notify them all what color gown Jean would be
wearing so Charles could match accordingly. It had been back to the tailor all
over again, and only Hank keeping Charles entertained with stories of his own
secret experiments in the dusty nooks and crannies of House Eglantine's
labyrinthine rooms kept him from expiring out of monotonous taedium vitae.
Soon the carriage is rolling up to great doors of the palace, manned by guards
at all times. Jacques wishes him mirth-filled felicitations as Charles steps
out and Coulson follows. It takes all of Charles’ self-control not to give him
a crude gesture Raven taught him as a child in farewell.
At the doors to the throne room, Coulson touches his elbow and says, "I will
leave you here."
Charles nods and swallows. It’s not like he can get lost between here and the
reception room.
Coulson's eyes run over him in steely assessment. Charles knows from his mind
that he does not like men, but he hears Coulson's mental admiration. He will do
alright.
"On the morrow," Charles says softly and then the majordomo rushes to usher him
through the doors into the receiving room.
Princess Jean, a pretty redhead with an expression as smooth and unknowable as
marble, sits on the throne next to her grandfather. Charles has seen her during
holidays and on parades, but never from this close. He knows that some people
feel that Malkin's younger brother who has been foisted off in a political
marriage in La Serenissima, in order to pacify the notoriously craft Stregazza,
should lead in Jean's stead. Charles has often felt that has far more to do
with Jean’s sex than her age or her ability to rule, but he doesn't have to
read her mind to know that she has more than enough backbone.
He sinks into the pose of obeisance, head bowed.
"Rise," the King commands him. He is old and frail and his eyes droop with
weary sorrow, but Charles knows they once must’ve held the same snapping
intensity of Jean’s to be so revered of a monarch. But as Charles knows from
his history lessons, he buried his wife and all of their children, long before
he will ever go to his grave.
Jean rises from her seat and steps down the dais, capturing his attention. She
reaches forward to touch his bent head, hand only stopping in an uncertain
hover at the last moment.
"You are lovely," she says, breathlessly. The first sign of any agitation on
her part. Charles knows that if he comments on her looks in turn, she will grow
annoyed, so he simply bows his head again and accepts the compliment with a
mild thank you.
There is dinner and dancing where they are much stared at. Their outfits and
complimentary coloring make them a beautiful matched pair and Charles feels
like they are as scrutinized as a pair of geldings to lead a coach and four.
Charles does not leave her side, standing at attention at her shoulder, even
when Jean eschews the dance floor. They do not speak. Charles refrains from
reading her mind. Somehow it is not quite politic, he feels, and her thoughts
are quiet, as well-concealed as the expressions on her face. Courtiers drift by
to pay homage to the dauphine, but also to stare at Charles, this untried adept
who will deflower their crown princess. He's not quite sure how she deals with
the conspicuous examination all day, every day.
At long last, just as he’s starting to feel like he’s going to rattle right off
the little raised dais Jean’s chair is elevated upon, Jean rises up, signaling
to all assembled their departure and everything that entails. Charles follows a
pace behind as is proper.
When they get to her chambers, Jean hesitates before crossing the threshold,
carefully ignoring the guards that stand on either side of the door. Charles
runs a hand over the small of her back. "Your highness," he says softly and she
sighs and moves into the room. She keeps her back turned to him as she discards
her earrings and rings. She goes to remove the fastenings of her dress and he
stops her.
"Let me do that," he says, reaching forward to unknot her laces.
"I am perfectly capable," she says shortly, but she does not make him stop. He
kisses her shoulder. Somehow the fact that she is more nervous than he is,
steadies him. The stiffness goes out of her body.
As he gently maneuvers her toward her titanic fourposter bed, the knowledge
that this will end with his own release threatens to undo his calm completely.
Everything has been leading up to this moment. It is almost inconceivable that
it's finally here.
He performs the languisement on her and is shocked to discover her amazement
upon orgasm. Surely there was nothing preventing her from taking her own
pleasure as there was for him? Charles knows what this feels like. He has felt
it many times from the minds around him, but still it is nothing compared to
the sensation of losing himself in her body, braced above her, with her long
legs about his hips. It is perfect and overwhelming, almost to the point of
pain and he narcissistically can’t help from feeding it by nudging her into a
second climax with the touch to her mind.
The second time, she tentatively asks to put her mouth on him, not quite able
to meet his gaze. He wants to tell her not to be embarrassed or ashamed, after
all he’s just as much a novice in reality as she is, but he fears she wouldn’t
believe it. Either way, the feel of her mouth on him is heaven, as inexpert as
it is. Not that it matters, since Charles doesn’t even know what he wants and
likes. He supposes he will have a lot of time to figure this out in his rooms
upon leaving this place. When she climbs astride him, steady and sure,
misgivings lost in the face of his obvious impassioned distraction, it is like
a benediction. Using his shoulders to lever herself up and down, fingers
between her thighs on her newly discovered clitoris, he comes far too quickly,
and it is only through sheer force of will and long hours of training that he
manages to stay hard.
They only stop when they both feel completely wrung out. Charles is almost
dazed, brain on overload from the near constant barrage of sensation. Of
course, then the crippling awkwardness of before returns in force and they lie
next to each other in embarrassed silence.
He clears his throat and tentatively asks after the Ch’in brocade cushions she
had sitting on her vast window seat that they had frantically discarded for
various purpose through out the room.
“They were a gift from the ambassador, why?”
“Eglantine house had a set from a patron.” Charles coughs delicately. “I ruined
them pretty thoroughly when I decided to combine sodium hypochlorate with
ammonia.”
“Isn’t that quite toxic?” She says, propping her head up on her arm. He’s
impressed that she knows that, but then Fury did say she requested him for his
infamous love of experiments.
“Oh yes, the pillows had to be thrown out, as well as a good half the carpeting
and draperies. It was not my proudest hour.”
She laughs and the tension finally abates. She seems to enjoy his many stories
of the scrapes he got into, so he regales her with the tales of his
misadventures before he came to live with Fury. Not that they entirely stopped
once Fury took him in. Charles had accidentally set the drapes on fire at least
twice.
"I wish I could have gotten in trouble," she says with a laugh. "I never get to
have any fun."
Charles makes a noise of mock-outrage. "What do you call this then?"
"A horrible, horrible chore," she replies with a laugh. "I don't know how I
ever got through it so many times tonight!"
"You are cruel, princess," he says with a smile and drops a kiss to the corner
of her mouth.
Later when it's time to go she hands him an ebony case. "A patron gift," she
explains, looking more embarrassed at the thought that she is acknowledging
Charles pleased her than anything else that they did that night. Charles
accepts it carefully.
"Open it," she says, face sliding into that same stoic disposition she
displayed the day before.
Charles lifts the lid, revealing a beautiful brass telescope. "Your highness,
it's…"
"You may sell it if you wish," she interrupts him, "so that it may go towards
your marque." The cost of his virgin price and all money he makes on subsequent
assignations go to Fury, but patron gifts belong to the adept alone and may be
committed towards paying the marquist. As soon as the marque is completed,
Charles will be his own man, free to set up a salon, or blow things up in a
chemistry lab all day long.
"It seems extraordinarily bad manners to sell a gift from a princess," he
teases.
The facade cracks for a brief moment. "No, I…I know what it is to be bound in a
service you did not choose."
"But I did choose it," he says, reassuring her, "and I would never sell such a
beautiful piece of equipment as this. I will treasure it, always."
She lets out a breath, a genuine smile in her eyes. "I am glad."
*
When he gets back to the house he immediately seeks out the presence of Fury.
He finds him in his study, two diagrams up on the walls before him.
"Ah, I see you have returned, look at the designs that Master Tielhard has--
" Charles interrupts him with a fierce hug around his middle.
"Charles, this is most inappropriate!" Fury says grouchily, detangling himself.
Charles grins up at him and Fury rolls his eyes. "Well, I don't need to be a
mind reader to know exactly how last night went."
"Oh yes? Really, so you know how we-"
"Elua above, finish that sentence and die! Whatever was I thinking bringing two
adepts into my house? You are positively unbearable." He turns back to the
diagram and says, "Now look, Master Tielhard has sent over some preliminary
designs for yours and Moira's marques."
Charles looks at the one Fury points to, half-expecting the eglantine rose to
be worked into the design. After all, what other natural link does he have?
What he finds nearly takes his breath away.
Fury clears his throat, looking suddenly uncomfortable in the face of Charles’
admiration. “It’s only because of the Night Court that the marque has typically
featured flowers, I thought something different was appropriate,” he says in
explanation, sounding casually arrogant about disregarding some thousand years
of heritage. Not that Charles' minds thumbing his nose at the Night Court at
all and so he is glad his design is special. It is symmetric as all other
marques Charles has ever seen--a pair of spread raven wings overlaid with a
series of dark lines demonstrating the angles and natural polygons inherent in
the wings’ construction.
“Sacred geometry,” Charles says, reaching out to trace tentative fingers over
the outline.
“It is mathematically accurate, Tielhard got the idea when I asked for
something a little more cerebral.” Fury says, tapping his mouth thoughtfully.
“He tells me that the raven symbolizes knowledge in Alba.”
Charles laughs. He wonders how Raven will feel about her namesake tattooed over
his back, probably insufferably smug, but the design is perfect all the same.
*
Chapter End Notes
     Next time there will be an Erik Lehnsherr, I promise!
***** Enter Knight in Shining Armor *****
Chapter Summary
     Charles gets a new bodyguard.
Four years later…
Charles walks down the steps of Mssr. Leveau’s townhouse, feeling a pleasant
lassitude. He pulls his fashionable black leather gloves back onto his hands
and nods as Coulson holds the door of the carriage open for him. He gets in and
Coulson climbs in after, giving the roof a thump to signal they’re ready to go
to the coachman.
The assignation was informative. Charles is always glad when he has information
for Fury. Often enough Charles finds himself fucking some hapless patron,
scanning the brains of the household and it’s master, and finding absolutely
nothing. Those times are tiring and trying and he always feels somewhat
regretful afterwards. But Leveau, they correctly suspected, was involved with a
group of privateers that had been keeping the D’Angeline fleet busy for months.
Charles had fucked him, over his desk, picking the code to read his ledgers
right out of his head. Now Charles gets to go home to a nice bath and then an
evening in Night’s Doorstep with Raven.
He never even senses the minds that mean to do them ill until too late,
something that will trouble him for weeks afterwards. The carriage rocks
suddenly and Charles starts as a crossbow bolt stabs itself halfway through the
mahogany door. They roll to a halt amid the clatter of hooves and men’s raised
voices. There’s a cut-off shout and then the coachman’s presence is snuffed out
of the world completely. Charles freezes in shocked surprise, probing the space
where he used to be, like a tongue against an absent tooth. “He’s...he’s dead,”
Charles says unsteadily. Coulson puts a hand on his thigh, mind resounding with
stay here so loud it hurts. He pushes out of the carriage, shutting the door.
Charles stays frozen in helpless shock for a moment longer and then he expands
his powers outward, looking through their attackers eyes. It is too late.
Coulson has felled two of the five toughs Charles senses in the area, but the
man carrying the crossbow tightens his finger on the trigger before Charles can
clamp down on the action.
He watches through the remaining attackers eyes and Coulson’s own in a
horrified stupor as the bolt flies true, piercing Coulson through the throat.
His last thought is an exhortation for Charles to run. Charles, stunned, and
holds the assailants frozen, unable to process.
He feels their mental panic spike and realizes he has frozen everything, their
lungs breathing and their hearts beating. For one horrifying moment he wants to
hold onto the whole thing, feel the life seep out of them, but then he lets go,
disgusted and terrified of himself. They tumble off their horses, gasping for
breath and Charles stumbles out of the carriage and away from them. He knows he
should hold onto them, probe their consciousness for answers, but he needs to
be as far away from them and the overwhelming tang of death that clings to the
whole street.
He sprints through the streets, tears running down his face. His lungs burn,
but he does not stop, he has to take it on faith that he stunned the men enough
that they will not attempt pursuit. He cannot bring himself to seek the
repulsive touch of their psyches out. When he reaches Fury’s property, the
gates are thrust open, Moira and the bewildered staff waiting to usher him
inside. He collapses in the courtyard, shivering mightily.
“They killed them, they killed them,” he repeats, hysterical as Moira tries to
get him back onto his feet. Charles has felt death before, minds absent where
before they’d taken up so much space, but nobody he knows, and never in his
presence. It was horrible. It felt like being dragged down into dark churning
water, ankles weighted with rocks.
Fury comes at a run, around him everybody is shouting and a kitchen boy is
dispatched to the local constabulary. Charles is only half-aware of this,
because he’s trapped in that horrible moment of Coulson’s death, feeling the
arrow pierce his throat and an inexorable despair in the face of his own demise
as if he was the one killed. He does not feel it when somebody lifts his head
and pours a draught down his throat, but he feels the darkness descend over him
like somebody snuffed out the light.
*
Charles accepts no assignations for two weeks. Fury would not let him or Moira
out even if they wanted to go. So he ensconces himself in the library, reading
silly novels and trying not to think about dark water. Fury even sends for
Raven, although he does not approve of her in the slightest. Charles sits with
her in the garden, sipping tea and doing his best to laugh. Sometimes, Moira
joins them, but Raven makes it quite clear that Moira annoys her. Charles feels
awkward, but he doesn’t have it in him to fight, and Moira, in her unending
compassion, understands and leaves them alone.
Finally one morning Charles goes to Fury’s study and knocks on the door. He
needs to set up an appointment with Master Tielhard. His last patron gift will
add another inch to his marque and he can’t avoid the world forever.
“What is it?” Fury yells through the door.
“May I speak with you?” Charles answers.
“Enter,” Fury calls back and Charles pushes open the door, coming to a halt at
the sight of a man standing at military attention in front of Fury’s desk.
“What?” he starts, subconscious unconsciously reaching towards this other
person. He has to pull back on it so hard it feels like a snapped thread. The
man turns his head and Charles realizes he must be a Cassiline, especially
dressed in all that ashy gray. Nobody else would willingly choose to wear that
burial shroud.
It’s a tragedy, because the man is beautiful, absolutely heartrendingly
gorgeous. Charles swallows.
“Meet your new escort, Erik Lehnsherr,” Fury says. The Cassiline inclines his
head gravely, his face a stiff mask.
Even as he rolls the name around in his mouth--assuredly not D’Angeline,
perhaps from the low countries--he hears himself saying, “I don’t need an
escort, I thought I proved myself adequately capable of defending myself.”
Do not think me a fool. You can’t be expected to read the minds of everybody
who comes into your presence. Fury thinks at him. Obviously for all that he
plans to trust this Cassiline with their safety, he has not deemed him ready to
know Charles’s secret or even their larger purpose. Aloud, he says, “Think of
Moira and if I may say, however capable you are at defending yourself, we must
think of propriety. An adept must always have an escort.”
Charles is nearly bowled over by the strong mental wave of derision rolling off
Erik. He seels all too clearly that this was not an assignment the cassiline
asked for.
It makes Charles bridle and he bites off, “What can you do that Coulson could
not?”
Fury shakes his head at him in warning, but the Cassiline has risen to the
bait. “Your Coulson,” Erik says like it’s a bad taste in his mouth, “was
expelled from the brotherhood halfway through his training. There is a great
deal that I can do that your Coulson never could have.”
Charles stares at him, lips parted. “Un--unbelievable,” he says and stomps out
of the room.
*
Erik accompanies him to his first assignation later that week.
They'd barely spoken two words to each other in all that time. Charles had
locked himself in the library, only opening the doors to admit food, much to
Fury's amusement.
"You're being a child," Fury told him, poking his head through the door.
"There is absolutely no other swordhand in the kingdom available?"
Fury snorted and refused to answer.
Charles' only comfort, petty though it was, was that Erik had no more patience
for Moira than he did for Charles.
Erik took over the inner courtyard to practice the flowing forms known only to
the Cassiline brotherhood. If anybody thought Charles had taken to watching
him, hidden on the balcony that ringed the courtyard, well, he was D'angeline,
and even if Erik was an absolute insufferable prig who disdained of nearly
every aspect of the Fury Household, he was breathtaking. It was no hard feat to
believe that Erik was fifty times the fighter that Coulson was, all you had to
do was watch him as he bent and struck, wiping out invisible opponents with
twin daggers that usually adorned his wrists in armored vambraces. The
broadsword he carried strapped across his back went completely untouched.
Stepping outside, the first time he's left the house in weeks with Erik at his
back makes him feel better. And then he is annoyed with himself for the
weakness. It only occurs to him as Erik sits on the bench opposite him, stone-
faced, that his thoughts are quiet. He thinks of his forms, and of the
monastery. He does not think about how Charles irks him at all, and Charles
can't help but be amused.
Erik lifts a brow at Charles' unexplained smile. Charles rolls his eyes and
shakes his head. "I am merely happy to have an assignation."
"You enjoy it then?" He says, arms crossed. He looks mildly revolted.
"Why would I not? 'Love as thou wilt,'" Charles says, knowing his eyes have
gone hard. There is precious little about the gods or the matters of religion
that concern him, but Charles has a healthy respect for the sacred precept
their fair country was founded upon even if it was steeped in religious
superstition. It is in his blood to share his body, the only solace he knows
how to give. If Erik thinks him a depraved injured soul that is his cross to
bear. Although Charles does miss the former tranquility of Erik's mind. His
horror at Charles' quotation is like a thunderstorm across a previously
undisturbed lake. He thinks Charles, and all denizens of the Night Court, do
not understand what those words really mean.
He takes in the muscle ticking in Erik's jaw, the way his strong hands have
gone white knuckled. He is beautiful even in righteous anger. Really, it’s not
fair. It makes Charles' tongue sharper than he originally intended. "Why are
you here then in this carriage if you despise me and my wickedness so much?"
Erik snorts. "You think I had a choice? No, I did not." He turns to stare at
the heavily curtained window like he can see through it to the city rushing
past. "But I. do. my. duty."
"Blessed angels, how the sky would come tumbling down on us if you didn't,"
Charles replies nastily. It is sickly satisfying when Erik's mind registers the
hit to his pride.
But Erik surprises him, leaning into Charles' space so that Charles can see the
flecks of amber in his eyes. "What I cannot understand is why my lord Fury
would need one such as me to guard you and your delicate little compatriot," he
says, meaning Moira. "And what hold would Fury have over the prefect of our
order to grant him a Cassiline to guard two whores?"
Charles's smile is a weapon thrown as handily as any dagger. "Perhaps we are
very, very good," he says, reaching out to put a practiced hand on Erik's knee,
thumb digging into tensed muscle and then swiping over it, "at what we do."
But Charles feels no attraction coming from Erik, provoked or otherwise. He
brushes Charles' hand off unceremoniously, like whores grope him in carriages
all the time.
"I know what they say about your master," Erik says, voice soft like the
whisper of steel out of its sheath. "I know what you are. And you tell me you
go to them for the joy of it? Only to steal their dearest secrets?"
Charles holds his gaze, angry as he has never been in his entire life. He has
to restrain himself from seizing all the people in the area and making them
shout at Erik with his own rage. It requires a breath, a moment to regain
control. "If you know what it is I do, than you know why I do it."
Erik makes a derisive noise. "I see no value or honor in subterfuge."
"Of course, of course. Only a man as sainted and pure as you would know of
honor," Charles replies, staring past Erik's shoulder to the patterned wood of
the carriage. "Be silent, Cassiline, you are not here for your tongue."
If Charles puts more of a command in his voice than he means to, Erik's smirk
and spread hands--a parody of an apology--are no capitulation. He looks away
from Charles, dismissing him. The anger and chaos in his mind quieting to that
tranquil lake once more. Charles is furious. He wants to throw things, maybe
set Erik's Cassiline grays on fire. He would dearly love to taunt him with
memories of his assignations, the most wanton and salacious of them. The ones
where Charles makes them beg and plead for him to fill them up, the ones where
Charles worships them with his mouth until they can take it no more. And the
bone-deep satisfaction they have afterwards. Then Erik can tell him how wrong
it is. But it would not do. Erik is implacable.
*
The assignation is a difficult one, because the patron is in mourning for a
lost love, but casting aside his own pain soothes Charles' battered psyche.
Nevertheless, he cannot help a stumble when he walks into the antechamber where
Erik waits, arms crossed on the hilts of his daggers, at military attention.
Erik is across the room in seconds, steadying Charles with a strong hand on his
upper arm. Charles nearly shrugs him off, but Erik’s mind is filled only with
concern, grudging though it may be. Charles lets Erik lead him out of the house
and into the waiting carriage.
"Is it always like this?" Erik asks, getting Charles settled on the bench
before sliding in across from him.
Charles leans his head back and carefully meets Erik's eyes. When he speaks,
his voice is hoarse. "He lost his lover nearly a year ago to illness. It haunts
him still."
Erik looks shocked and Charles sighs. "It is not all secrets and lies,
Cassiline. Sometimes it is exactly as it appears."
"What's that?" Erik asks, pointing to a velvet pouch dangling off his belt that
Charles did not have before he went into the house.
Charles smiles wearily. "A patron gift," he says, upending the pouch of deep
green emeralds into his open palm.
He is assaulted by Erik's preposterous vision of him decked out gaudily in the
stones and he ducks his head to hide a grin. "They will go to pay the
Marquist."
"A step closer to freedom," Erik says, ironic.
Charles watches him through half-lidded eyes. "A step closer to mastery," he
corrects. The coach's rocking is soothing, and his eyes feel heavy. He has
spent the better part of six hours trying to make a man forget the only person
he ever loved. This exhaustion is earned. With a yawn he slides into sleep
under Erik's watchful gaze.
He wakes briefly when they come to a halt. Erik doesn't even attempt to rouse
him, merely slides his arms under Charles' body and picks him up like he weighs
nothing. His heart beats in Charles' ear like the powerful strokes of a bird's
wings. It feels right. He has a sneaking suspicion that that should bother him,
but then he's gone again.
*
***** Revelations *****
Chapter Summary
     Things begin to heat up.
Chapter Notes
     Sorry this update is so much later than the previous ones! I was at
     Coachella last weekend and it totally kicked my ass and stole my
     lunch money!
He had hoped that Erik wouldn't need to attend him on his errands or that Moira
would have ten engagements in a row and he’d be blessedly free of him. Anything
to give him a little breathing room, but Fury seems to think Erik is fine right
where he is. Charles is going to go mad. On the one hand, things seem to be
better between them after their carriage clash, on the other, Charles finds
himself dangerously attracted to Erik and he doesn’t want it or like it in the
slightest.
"Take him if you sneak off to Night's Doorstep," Fury says before Charles can
even get a word out.
“You...you can’t be serious, my time in Night’s Doorstep belongs to me!”
“Charles, not anymore,” Fury says and dismisses with him a glance. They still
haven’t found who Coulson’s killers are, something Charles continues to be
upset about. He failed at his one job, but if Fury is investigating the matter,
it’s without Charles’ help or knowledge.
Charles hadn’t been planning to sneak off, but now he’s determined. He cloaks
himself from all the servants’ minds with ease borne of much practice and
vaults the garden wall. And promptly screams in surprise when he turns around
and finds Erik already leaning against the back gate, arms crossed so that his
vambraces are visible.
“Elua!” he says, hand pressed to his heart. He can’t believe Erik snuck up on
him. Or rather he can, since he’s been trying so hard to block Erik’s
consciousness from his mind, but how in all the seven hells could Erik have
known?
“Master Fury told me to expect you,” Erik replies, obviously amused, and
Charles has to read his mind to ensure that Erik isn’t reading his own. “To
Night’s Doorstep?” he proposes sardonically.
Charles has the sudden urge to send him around the city barking like a dog, but
he restrains himself at the last moment. When he gets back he’ll take his
revenge by doing alchemical experiments on the roof above Fury’s bedroom.
Childish maybe, but this is getting ridiculous. As they navigate the windy
streets leading to the city’s seedier quarters, he tries not to betray how much
Erik walking behind and to the right of his shoulder in a mockery of a position
of subservience is bothering him. Erik’s growing amusement washing over him in
persistent waves proves how unsuccessful that is.
“Listen,” Charles whispers furiously, pulling up to a stop as the alleys and
thoroughfares begin to narrow. Erik only just avoids walking into Charles’
back. “The people here won’t take well to a Cassiline.”
Erik raises a brow. He doesn’t give a good goddamn how they feel about him and
the look on his face says as much.
Charles grumbles, “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He finds Raven at their usual tavern. Clearly she’s had a good run of it,
because her fingers are covered in opulent rings and she’s wearing a rich
velvet dress that would make even Moira jealous. There are people everywhere,
demanding Raven this, Raven that. Charles has never seen her so happy.
She nearly drops her tankard full of ale at the sight of Erik.
Mother of Elua, why on earth have you brought a blessed Cassiline to Night’s
Doorstep. She projects at him in a rare display of trust for his powers.
He wanted to come, Charles thinks back, acidly.
And of course, barely half an hour of good conversation later, all hell breaks
loose. Some enterprising (and unreservedly foolish) pervert decides to give
Erik’s rear an ungentle palming. Erik, who has undoubtedly never had his
backside groped and obviously does not enjoy the advance, breaks said
enterprising pervert’s hand. Which of course, offends the enterprising
pervert’s woman, who hurls her tankard of ale on Erik and starts screaming like
a harpy. Within seconds the place has erupted in a brawl. Charles could easily
intervene, but he doesn’t think he’s going to.
Raven stands off to the side with him, holding only the handle of her ale mug
(the rest having been lost when she used it to club somebody who got too
close), and shakes her head. “Are you quite proud of yourself?”
Charles laughs and rubs his hands together as Erik attempts alternately to
break the fight apart and to beat the ever-loving tar out of anybody who comes
too close. Raven rolls her eyes at him and goes off to get herself another
drink. Charles merely wishes all of the chairs weren’t currently being utilized
as bludgeons, because he could use a seat for the unexpected entertainment.
Erik proves himself woefully overmatched—as a Cassiline he’s not allowed to do
damage unless it is in obvious defense of himself or his charge. The rest of
the patrons have no problem gleefully pounding on each other. Finally, after a
while, Charles’ sense of chivalry kicks in and he decides enough is quite
enough. The tankard of mulled wine slopped over his trousers help. He inserts
himself into the melee to grab Erik about the shoulders and tug him bodily out
of the pub. Erik gets ungracefully shoved into a laundress Charles knows holds
arm wrestling contests that she never loses, and Charles nearly expires from
laughter when she gathers him up to her bosom. The world seems at last willing
to grant him a couple favors.
“My, my you are a pretty one,” she says as Erik struggles to breathe against
her cleavage. “They say you’re all as pure as the driven snow.”
“Ah Melanie...” he pauses when laughter threatens to overtake him, “this one is
mine. Get’s a good bit of fun dressing up like a priest.”
Melanie looks intrigued, but she lets him go and they stumble out into the
night air.
“Nevermind, you may always come with me to Night’s Doorstep. That was better
theater than I’ve seen in ages.”
Erik—covered in several glasses of ale, hair dripping into his eyes, blushing
from Charles’ implication of perversity, with a truly fearsome scowl twisting
his mouth—somehow he still manages to be utterly devastating. “Glad...to be of
service,” he grits out.
*
Charles woefully only rarely dreams his own dreams. In sleep he has none of the
control of his waking hours. But tonight the dream is decidedly his. It’s
against his wall, next to his window, that he dreams of being fucked, hard and
rough, his hands pinned above his head in an iron grip. He wakes up to sticky
sheets and Erik’s name on his lips. Charles nearly screams in frustrated rage.
He settles for punching his pillow a few times.
This is getting out of control. No adept should be soiling their sheets in this
manner, ever. It’s like a musician banging at an out-of-tune piano. He gets out
of bed and forces his roiling mind to meditate. It’s easier for Charles than it
is for other people, since he spends so much of his time controlling exactly
what he thinks about and where he thinks it. Tonight however, he can’t stop
running Erik working through his traditional Cassiline forms, that goddamn
smirk firmly in place, over and over in his head.
The next morning, tired and irritable and snapping at everybody, Fury tells him
he’s booked him an appointment with Master Tielhard. Charles sighs.
“Erik?” He’s not entirely sure why, but Erik’s condemning thoughts hovering
over him while Master Tielhard finishes up a design across his skin that only
further cements and clarifies Charles’ position feels like a step too far.
Fury stares at him expressionlessly. He sets his cup of tea down. “Charles.”
Charles knows this is his last warning, before Fury gets well and truly angry
with him. “Alright, alright. I give in. I’ll stop fighting you on it.”
It’s for your own safety, he hears unexpectedly loudly in his head. Charles
winces and wonders how long Fury spent practicing that booming mental shout. He
has never been above theatrics to get what he wants.
Erik and the carriage are summoned and Charles does his best not to drag his
feet or look too miserable.
*
Master Tielhard is all gruff efficiency, while his shy apprentice clatters
around in the backroom while the master harangues him. He strips Charles of his
shirt and coat and then impatiently gestures at him to lie down on the table.
Erik lounges in the corner of the room, his arms crossed in his familiar
stance. Charles meets his eyes, feeling unwarrantedly shy, before turning
around and stretching out on the table.
Erik has never seen the design uncovered. He has never seen Charles uncovered
at all. Charles somewhat sardonically feels he’s the most restrained harlot
there ever was, regardless of Erik’s thoughts on the matter. Moira has been
known to prowl the house in her sheer morning gown and she certainly hasn’t
bothered to stop just because of the house’s sudden addition of a Cassiline
brother.
Master Tielhard smacks him on the behind after drawing his trousers low on his
waist to expose the dimples alongside Charles’ spine. “Settle,” he says, “Lie
naturally.”
With an effort, Charles manages to force the tension out of his body and relax.
He pillows his head on his arms and catches the awed gaze of the apprentice,
who blushes radiantly and lowers unbelievable long lashes. Charles smiles in
fond amusement. If he were a little older, Charles would have no trouble taking
the boy out the back and showing him a trick or too.
“Are you warm enough?” the apprentice asks, voice cracking as if he too is
imagining the same thing.
Charles nods and braces himself for the first touch of the needle. There’s not
much left to be inked in—a year, maybe even a season, and his marque will be
completed. Although he doubts his work with Fury will be concluded. Master
Tielhard is fast and economical with both ink and needle, the best in the whole
of Terre D’ange if not the western continent. Charles doesn’t mind the pain,
but he finds it itchy and difficult to stay still. Master Tielhard is forever
smacking his bottom and exhorting him not to move.
There’s a growing sense of arousal permeating the room, as Master Tielhard
works on the next inch of the tattoo. After some investigation, Charles is
flabbergasted to trace its emanation back to Erik rather than the boy. Erik,
who has had nothing but disdain and cold removal at the thought of Charles and
his body and all that he uses it for. Has he been so little exposed to nudity
that a little flash of Charles’ back and the beginning swell of his buttocks is
enough to titillate? Charles finds it a mildly depressing thought. Perhaps he’s
wrong entirely and his brain is just hoping Erik is as disturbed about Charles
as Charles is about Erik.
He cranes his neck to meet Erik’s gaze and finds his expression just as tight
and masklike as it always is when he’s not mocking Charles’ mercilessly. It’s
almost enough to convince him he’s gone entirely insane and is crossing streams
of consciousness in his head. Erik glares even more hatefully at Charles than
usual when he finds him looking and Charles drops his eyes quickly. As Master
Tielhard begins to limn the blades of his shoulders another spike of excitement
fills the room, making Charles tremble. He wonders if Erik is hard underneath
that ridiculous Cassiline sack he always wears, confused and thoughtful about
his new knowledge, but nevertheless convinced he’s not wrongfully attributing
anything at all.
As the session continues, he keeps sneaking looks back at Erik, seeing color
gradually rise in his cheeks. It’s boggling and Charles keeps trying to come up
with explanations, trying most desperately to convince himself that he doesn’t
want Erik’s interest. When he feels himself beginning to stiffen off of Erik’s
backwash, the heat roaring as strongly through him as any of Erik’s less
flattering thoughts about Charles’, he shuts down his consciousness of the
room, forcing himself to wallow in almost uncomfortable psychological silence.
However unused to the lack of noise he is, it is far preferable to embarrassing
himself on the table over Erik’s foundering control.
When Master Tielhard blessedly pronounces that he’s done for the day and the
apprentice comes forward to wipe down Charles’ tender back, he is more than a
little relieved. Only the mental deadening of the room had willed his erection
away. Erik growls that he’ll be waiting for Charles outside, stomping out
before anybody can respond. It is abrupt enough that both the apprentice and
Master Tielhard stare after him. Charles feels absurdly like he should
apologize for Erik's behavior.
“Cassilines,” Tielhard says after a long moment, shaking his head. He directs
the apprentice to bandage up Charles’ back. “Peculiar, the lot of them.”
Charles laughs and wishes that was all Erik was.
“Are you quite alright?” he asks minutes later, exiting the shop now fully
covered and unable to resist poking the bear a little bit. Erik rolls his eyes
at him and hands him up into the carriage without the merest whisper of
interest, like he hadn’t been turned on by the sight of Charles arranged on
that table, Master Tielhard carefully etching the wings into his skin.
Charles sighs in disappointment, trying to tell himself it’s because it’s clear
he will never understand Erik and not because he greatly craved Erik’s desire.
***** A palette of emotions *****
Chapter Summary
     In which a little more of Erik becomes clear.
Charles knows he’s in trouble when he starts getting tangled up in Erik’s
dreaming consciousness every night. When he was little, his mind unerringly
sought his mother, and later Raven, but the part of him that never really goes
to sleep had been tempered by Fury’s training. It had been many years since he
learned to harness his wandering mind in. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so awful, but
for the fact that Erik has turbulent and horrifying nightmares—nightmares that
have the harsh finality of well-cemented memories.
Erik’s sleeping brain plays a scene of two people his subconscious associates
with love and home and stability—parents, better ones than Charles ever
had—driving a merchant caravan from the near east all the way to the more
familiar shores of the Aegean sea. It rains and the unpaved road turns to
earthen mulch—a wheel on the lead caravan breaks under the strain, forcing them
all to an unwelcome halt. Bandits waterfall inexorably down from the mountains,
their Skaldic hired swords turn on them, dispatching everybody in their path
until only Erik is left alive, marred only by a thin scratch above his eyebrow.
They drag him, screaming himself hoarse, from the cooling corpses of his mother
and father.
Erik dreams—if only the wheel didn’t break, if only they’d gotten a better head
start and beaten the rain, if only they’d hired trustworthy guards, but above
it all—if only they hadn’t been Yeshuite. On no other people would such
wholesale slaughter be perpetrated. The anger and resentment of this follows
Charles into his waking hours.
Sometimes Erik dreams of running through the woods, trees so thick and numerous
the light barely shines through, never running fast or far enough, too tired
and too thin, shins aching and lungs burning. Erik knows he’s faster than this,
but he can’t widen the distance between him and the amorphous entity of wrong
and bad and never again that pursues him.
And Charles wakes up feeling sick—not because of the sadness or the tragedy of
these memories, a nightly commemoration of his bodyguard’s parent’s death.
Unfortunately Charles is almost inured to the ailments of the world, sensing
the depredations and heartbreak that all fall victim to sooner or later.
Charles wakes up woozy with illness and disorientation because, somehow, it
feels like he’s profaning a secret sanctum—the root of all Erik’s considerable
discipline. Erik doesn’t know about Charles’ abilities, he is not allowed to
know, and Charles clumsily plodding through his mind in his sleep is not
deserved.
But he can’t stop. His unsconscious mind likes the feel of Erik’s—it feels
right, somehow exactly like he always wanted when he reached for his mother’s
mind. If that’s not disquieting, Charles doesn’t know what is. So Charles does
the only thing he can: he ignores it. He doesn’t reach out a soothing hand
every time Erik’s ire spikes at the insults about his celibacy readily handed
out by D’angeline citizens rich and poor, cultured and gauche alike. And if he
buys Erik’s favorite pastry in a street stall because it reminds him of the
Rugelach—a harsh Germanic word that resonates in the forgotten corners of
Erik’s awareness—his mother made when they were anywhere long enough to have an
oven, well, that’s just him trying to apease Erik’s irascible nature. But
Charles' patience is not limitless.
One day, Erik is particularly sour, and after an assignation later followed by
a charming evening fete that Erik manages to darken with his thunderous
expression, causing guests to veer away from Charles and Moira with apologetic
fluttered hands and nervous smiles, Charles has had enough.
“Would you please do me the honor explaining this entirely unwarranted
behavior?” he growls, after dragging Erik aside onto a secluded balcony.
Erik removes Charles’ hand from his tunic with an offended twist of his lips.
“It is nothing.”
“It is not nothing! You have had a larger thorn in your ass than usual,”
Charles replies, doing everything he can not to just take a peak. He has always
been glad that the emotional seepage from Erik is relatively low compared to
most of the world. A fact he has noticed in all priests, whether they be
mischievous priestesses of Naamah or lemon-sucking Cassiline brothers. But
right at this moment, he would really love for Erik to give himself away.
“I can hear, you know,” Erik snarls at him.
“Yes, that was not a topic up for debate, are you going to tell me the price of
Ch’in tea next?”
Erik unexpectedly colors, but his voice does not lack for asperity. “During
your rendezvous, you twit.”
Charles blinks at him owlishly and then finds himself absurdly blushing as
well. This is outrageous—Charles is after all, little more than a prostitute.
You would think absolutely nothing could shame him at this juncture and yet,
here he stands, face flaming, trying desperately not to drop his gaze from
Erik’s in a show of retreat. He ruminates what on earth could have caused this
outburst now and then suddenly it comes to him. Earlier that day, the woman who
commissioned his services had been especially vocal and creative. Afterwards,
having all but worn Charles out, she had given him a flower fashioned from cut
crystal as a gift. It was fine work and Charles liked it and he is not, full
stop, going to be made ashamed of it. He’d spent far too much of his life
familiar with that emotion. “That’s the way it is, Cassiline, I cannot muffle
my patrons to preserve your maidenly virtue.”
“And you cannot expect me to sit idly by, listening to such depravity, week
after week.”
“And I suppose it’s different for Moira?” Charles replies, snidely. Of course
it is. Erik may not be seeking Moira out for her company, but he definitely
saves the insults and derision for Charles, hardly even bothering to moderate
them in Fury’s presence. Charles has never come across anything so unendingly
galling in his life. He glares at Erik and waits for the abuse sure to follow.
“Her patrons are not so…” Erik pauses, searching for the right word,
“enthusiastic.” The emphasis he places on the word says just how much he thinks
of that idea.
Charles can’t help the laughter that bursts past his lips at this ridiculous
pronouncement. “I think you just called me the better whore, darling.”
“To be sure, I was suffering no illusions on that score,” Erik answers darkly.
“Mmm,” Charles replies, “Life is trying, or so I’ve been told, you’ll just have
to suffer through it. If it makes you feel better you can call it a test of
faith. You ascetic sorts like that, don’t you?”
The look Erik gives him is pure poison, but Charles has decided he’s done
concerning himself with Erik’s mercurial moods. He pushes away the bitter
disappointment that there is exactly nothing he can do to stem Erik’s
continuing antipathy for him and blows Erik a kiss before returning to the
party, determined to have a good time.
If he smiles too brightly and drinks far too much champagne and wanders
aimlessly through the minds of the guests searching for interesting tidbits,
the only one who can tell is Moira.
*
Charles has never directly used his tricks to slip Erik’s grasp, mostly because
Fury would know at once, and give Charles the verbal thrashing of his life and
send him down to the country for a month like he’s been threatening for years.
But he wants go see Hank again and he doesn’t want Erik there making it awkward
and onerous. He walks right out under Erik’s nose with only a small twinge of
remorse and hires a carriage to take him to the Night Court. He snooped ahead
of time to make sure Hank’s stuffy old master has an appointment with an
important enough client to demand his presence at their residence.
He finds Hank on the tallest spire of Eglantine’s sprawling complex, dropping
objects off the side of the building and making notes in a little leatherbound
book.
“Hullo!” Charles calls, “Are you testing out Mssr. Galilei’s hypothesis on
dynamics?”
Hank whirls around in surprise, jettisoning the notebook off the roof and
nearly tripping over the side himself.
When he rights himself, he’s redfaced and shaking and thinking very hard at
Charles not to look at his feet, which, of course, Charles cannot help but
doing. He drops his eyes and finds that Hank’s toes are not at all correct, not
even slightly, for the human skeleton. Instead they seem to resemble the
appendages of a chimpanzee as Charles has only seen in anatomical diagrams.
“How did you--” he says, meaning to ask how Hank keeps those things shoved into
boots, but Hank misinterprets it and interrupts with, “I was born this way!”
“Well, of course,” Charles says, still staring at them, trying to get a closer
look as Hank shuffles uncomfortably. “I was merely wondering how you can bear
to wear shoes all day long.”
Hank clears his throat. “I can’t, not really, the boots I fashioned for myself
are not of the mode, the dowayne says, but I’m allowed to go barefoot if there
are no patrons around.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Charles says, “does she make you wear slippers when you’re
with a patron?”
Hank colors an even deeper red and says lowly, “I don’t get patrons.”
Hank is a comely boy--tall, slender, with deep blue eyes and a smattering of
charming freckles, and Charles would gladly take him to bed. “Not because of
your feet?”
Hank shrugs and sinks down to the rooftop, arms wrapped around his legs. “The
dowayne took me out of charity.”
“That’s nonsense!” Charles yells. “She’s getting years of free labor out of
you! And you a skilled draftsmen. Great Elua, I think more and more that woman
should’ve been an adept of Briony!”
Hank miserably lowers his chin to his knees. “Don’t--don’t tell anyone,” he
whispers.
Charles pulls up short, chagrined. He reaches out to touch Hank, but thinks
better of it. Of course not, he says, directly into Hank’s mind and smiles as
Hank’s face slowly grows lighter with wonder.
“How do you do that?” he asks, reaching out like he can feel whatever agent
that allows Charles to connect with others in the very air.
Charles shakes his head. “I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine.” The
thought seems to make Hank miserable again.
Charles goes to sit down beside him. “I came to see you, because of those
drawings you made. I am very starved for academic conversation, you
understand?” Hank raises a brow at him and Charles sighs. “The university type
are too poor and too lofty in ideals to talk physics and astronomy with a
common whore.”
Hanks nods at him and then looks down, flexing his toes in studied
consideration. Charles watches the tarsals and metatarsals unfurl in
fascination. Hank clears his throat and says mischievously, “If you want to
talk with scholars, you should probably know that it wasn’t Galileo’s
hypothesis of dynamics, but Simon Stevinus, of the low countries.”
“Oh, indeed?”
Hank nods. “It’s for work on my flying machine. Although I calculate I will be
well into my seventies before I can begin any real work on it.” He tosses it
off flippantly, but Charles can feel the pain behind it running over his nerves
like scouring sand.
“What?”
“I can’t take any assignations, I’m a lowly apprentice who earns no patron
gifts, and that is a conservative estimate at best.”
Not for the first time, Charles burns with the injustice and spitefulness of it
all. They must fit into these set boxes of beauty, of behavior, of economic
parity--he thinks of Raven thieving from fat D’angeline’s to keep her mother’s
laundry business afloat--they are all victims. Even endlessly cantankerous
Erik. Hank flinches away from it and Charles knows he hasn’t reigned himself in
well enough. He bites his lip sheepishly, trying to banish the bitter thoughts.
“I wish I could do something.”
Hank shrugs listlessly. “I’d settle for a new notebook.” He peers over the edge
of the roof at the notebook lying skewered on a rosebush. Charles laughs and
Hank does his best to smile. “Will you tell me about your capabilities?”
“I suppose, if you can find it in yourself to tell me about yours?” Hank looks
embarrassed again, but nods after a long moment.
They pass the entire afternoon that way, in conversation about flying machines
and Copernicans and special abilities that nobody should have. Charles sneaks
them out of the House and into one of Night’s Doorsteps better tea parlors,
masking Hank’s troublesome feet from all eyes so that Hank may go unshod. He
peppers Hank with all sorts of ideas to steal him out from under Eglantine's
nose, just like Raven suggested. Have Fury purchase him (although to Charles
sadness, Fury is nothing if not pragmatic, and what use would he find for a boy
like Hank?), or commission eight new wardrobes and shower him in patron gifts,
steal him away to Tiberium and the university there. Something, anything,
better than this horrifying holding pattern Hank remains trapped in.
“You’ll have to meet Raven,” Charles is just telling him over Ch’in tea and
fluffy sticky brioche, when a shadow darkens the table. Hank’s expression turns
immediately alarmed.
Charles sighs, Erik’s presence only just now registering on his mental map
after a day spent so engrossed in conversation. It is impressive though that
Erik managed to find him at all. “Hello, Cassiline.”
“Settle up, we’re leaving,” he growls, reaching out to grab Charles shoulder in
a grip that is only a hairsbreadth away from painful. Hank’s eyes only grow
rounder.
“Hank, I apologize for my erstwhile companion,” Charles says, digging in his
pocket for a couple of silvers to leave on the table. “Would you permit us to
walk you home?”
Erik’s grip tightens further on his shoulder and Hank squeaks, “I’m sure that
will be most unnecessary. I will...er...just send you any new findings I have.
Yes. That will do.”
“Oh, but--” Charles starts, but Hank is already up and out the shop in the
blink of an eye. Charles shakes his head, must be an aspect of the feet, he
decides. He’s never seen anybody move that fast, not even Raven.
“If you do not get up right now,” Erik tells him, voice low and dangerously
quiet, piercing through Charles’ thoughts like one of his wickedly honed
daggers, “I will pick you up and toss you over my shoulder.”
“There is absolutely no need to be so melodramatic about it,” Charles replies,
gathering himself together at an unhurried pace. He yelps when Erik tugs him
out of the chair by his collar. Erik drags him nearly ten streets, Charles
protesting and struggling the whole while, before he stops and throws Charles
back against a tavern wall, knocking the wind quite handily out of his lungs.
Charles gasps, stunned from the force of it, his head bouncing against the
brick.
Erik moves in close, green eyes snapping with vigor and righteous anger. “If
you ever, ever do that to me again, so help me I will kill you myself.”
Charles stares at him, groggily, and yet as defiant as he can manage. “If you
would make yourself more tolerable company, perhaps I wouldn’t need to steal
away,” he breathes.
Erik looks ready to strike him and Charles lifts his chin, preparing himself
for the blow, but something about it makes Erik pause, and he turns away,
shoulders hunched. He takes several deep breaths, before turning back to
Charles and ordering him to move. They don’t speak the rest of the way home,
but Charles is very aware of Erik on his periphery, silent and several steps
ahead of him. Erik never looks back to check if Charles is behind, seemingly
fully attuned to Charles’ presence without even looking, but Charles notes
after another long interminable minute of utmost silence between them, that
Erik’s hands tremble. It is only the minutest of twitches, but to anybody as
practiced as Charles, it is noticeable indeed. He thumbs his throat from where
his collar bit into his skin, counting himself lucky indeed if he doesn’t come
up covered in garish purple bruising. Abruptly it becomes clear that Erik’s
drawn up shoulders and the tension he radiates speak to something other than
anger.
Charles marvels at this. So, the Cassiline was worried.
***** Frustration, Dissatisfaction, Nonfulfillment - A pattern emerges *****
Chapter Summary
     Charles through no fault of his own earns himself a very unexpected
     patron.
Chapter Notes
     I know, I know. This is the saddest chapter update ever. I'm so
     sorry! My job got crazy and then I quit it and life was still crazy.
     I'm going to try to be better about this in the next couple of
     months. In the mean time, here's a little something I managed to
     scrape together.
If Erik thinks Charles is the chirpy and cheerful strumpet out of a sheer
unmitigated joy for constant debauched sex, which, Charles assumes he does,
occasional minor mishaps with patrons notwithstanding, then tonight will surely
prove him wrong. (Difficult, of course, to explain to Erik that Charles is glad
not to be relegated to a corner like some dusty La Serinissiman Doxy as he
spent the first eight years of his altogether too perceptive life thinking he
was.) Charles enjoys congress, as any sane D’angeline does, but that doesn’t
always mean it lends joy. Sometimes, more often than not, it’s a perfect bore,
and some patrons seem intent on waging intense manipulative warfare on him--
after all, he is being paid to be a plaything. If they wanted a psychologically
healthy tryst, they certainly wouldn’t be commissioning it. He tries not to
accept those clients twice, inasmuch control as Fury allows him, but sometimes,
and it seems more often than not, it is those egregious offenders who hold the
most important secrets to the realm’s seamy and pestilential underbelly.
And so he must allow himself to be trotted out like a Menekhet slave boy
dressed in only a gauzy subligaculum that had made Erik tighten his jaw and
look steadfastly at some point above Charles’ shoulder.
Frankly, that’s how he feels about it himself.
Alas, his patroness, while endowed in some areas like the lusty Tiberian
goddess, Venus, was not overwhelming society or Charles with her vast and over-
reaching sense of compassion. It seemed to him she would’ve been better suited
with an adept from Mandrake, but after a casual almost accidental skim of her
brain in response to a malicious comment made at another courtier’s unwitting
expense, it occurs to him that that was exactly the point. He realizes, to his
horror, that she would find no pleasure in his humiliation if a part of him
enjoyed it like a subservient Mandrake adapt would. And why not then, choose a
courtesan who had made a name for himself as an intelligent companion and do
her utmost to lay him low.
It is no small comfort that she's so easily exploited by her very desire to
demean him. She’d exiled him from the conversation, enjoyment sticking and
rolling on him like rotting fruit at the sight of his tightened jaw. He stands,
trying to look properly abject, in the corner of the room, paging through her
mind like an archivist, filing secrets away and interrupting Nick Fury who is
at some soiree for important old army farts with choice bits like, “I think it
is of vital importance that you know that she detests Caerdicci cheese, she
might try to steer our great nation in a war with that August Peninsula,” or
ten minutes later, “I have just found out that she suspects her cobbler of
trysting with her favorite ladies maid, we might expect her to abuse her power
as Lord Chancellor’s secretary to issue an edict against Eluine shoemakers.” It
is, after all, Fury’s fault for forcing him to weather her company.
Nick Fury’s mounting annoyance is coupled with an undercurrent of amusement and
wonder that Charles can reach him so clearly, leagues across the city, so
Charles keeps on pestering him.
“Aha! You!”
Charles jolts out of his patron’s mind with a start, to see a wild haired
youth, sharply dressed all in black, with a brimming glass of Namarrese wine in
each hand.
“Pardon?” he asks, trying to place the boy without cheating.
“I decided to make a study of the most bored person in the room, and while I
thought it would be difficult, because there are many levels of boredom here at
this farce of a party, you are, above and beyond, the worst. If I had a medal,
I’d present it to you with all honors.”
And then Charles knows who he is immediately, that simultaneously jocular and
biting tone so reminiscent of only one other man.
“Anthony Stark,” Charles says, “I am most delighted to make your acquaintance.”
The Stark boy blinks at him, surprised. “Tony, thank you. Is it fame or infamy
that brought my name to your ears?”
Charles knows better than to dignify that with a response. “Have you finished
your studies in Tiberium?” he asks mildly, trying to look as dignified as
possible bedecked in heavy jewels and a drafty loincloth.
“Returned, was sent packing, got tired of the whole thing--take your pick,” he
replies with a dissolute wave of his hand. “But you, little bird, have not
introduced yourself.”
Charles stares at the Stark heir with raised brow. Tony is not yet eighteen, if
he had to guess, and a glance through his mind confirms it. “Charles of House
Fury, if it pleases you.”
“Well, well, well, it is most definitely through infamy that I know you.”
Charles gives a startled laugh. He would hardly have thought word of his
exploits would travel all the way to the universities in Tiberium. If so, for
his own safety, he can only hope it is of the one vocation and not the other.
“What, pray, have you heard?”
“My word, is that a Cassiline?” Tony says, attention caught somewhere over
Charles’ left shoulder where Erik is no doubt hiding, a dark drab shadow. Tony
looks back at Charles. “I may have to take your boredom medal away, much though
it may displease you.”
Charles steals a glance through Tony’s eyes and confirms that Erik looks like
only his extreme puzzling love of his Cassiline greys is keeping him from
breaking his oath and leaving the party at a run.
Tony calls out to him, “Mssr. Cassiline, come here, would you please?”
Erik appears instantly at Charles’ shoulder, expression wiped blank to the
point of insolence. He says nothing, not even a greeting, not that this obvious
display of rudeness seems to perterb Tony in the slightest. “Brother Lehnsherr,
this is Anthony Stark, and as I’m sure you know, the heir to the ruling house
in Camlach.” Erik almost starts at the formal reference to his title, which
Charles has never before observed. The glare he cuts Charles brings a quickly
suppressed smile to his lips.
Tony stares at them, head tilted. “So, Cassiline, what brings you into such
gilded company?”
Erik’s famed incredulous eyebrow raises a hairsbreadth. Just enough to show his
contempt. Tony doesn’t seem the least cowed by it. “What, have you sworn a vow
of silence? Ye gods, you religious types are dull.”
Erik snorts. “I have not sworn any such vow, mssr., but neither am I required
to indulge the whims of capricious profligate lordlings.”
Charles clears his throat, ducking his eyes to hide his amusement. “And now
you’ve met my lovely bodyguard.”
Tony laughs. “A cassiline? Your infamy grows, little courtesan. Soon I’ll be
hearing tales of you riding tigers through the streets and serving your patrons
wine in the skulls of those that displease you.”
“Only if you’re spreading such fantasies, I imagine,” Charles replies
distractedly, all too aware of Erik’s stiff form beside him. Across the room,
his patroness catches his attention with a pointed glare and a snap of her
fingers. “I fear my devoir beckons.”
“I would not dare to keep you. It was most enlightening to meet you, lovely
Charles,” Tony says, taking Charles’ hand a brushing a kiss across the back.
“And you too, Brother Sourface.”
Charles only shakes his head at Tony’s theatrical roguishness and makes his way
across the room to pretend at simpering at his patronesses’ feet.
*
He’s not exactly surprised when Fury announces over breakfast two weeks later
that Tony Stark has inquired after his availibility, although he certainly
never lay in wait for it. “I doubt the boy knows anything of use. By all
accounts he's far too busy with his own pursuits--although I would give my eye
teeth for a look at the plans for Howard Stark’s siege engines.”
Charles pauses in his breakfast. “Do you think he would have access to such
documents?”
“You take me for a fool? Of course not,” Fury replies irascibly. “What I’m
trying to get at, is that the choice to take the job is yours.”
“Oh...well,” Charles stumbles, aware of Erik’s eyes on him.
“What’s he like?” Moira asks absently. A bushy white Akkadian kitten a patron
had given her sits in her lap, eating choice morsels of breakfast straight from
her fingers. She’d had the option to sell it to add another inch to her mark,
but had chosen to keep the little ball of fluff, much to the chagrin of nearly
the entire household. Fury, ever resourceful, found a use even in the unwanted
kitten. Charles has attempted to communicate with it thrice now, but has so far
met with little success.
Erik answers before Charles can, “He’s an arrogant spoilt clown.”
Charles laughs. “Just so.” He deliberates over a piece of fruit. “But I like
him. Tell him we accept.”
Fury nods. “If any plans just happen to be lying around...”
“I will do my utmost to relay copies, no eyeteeth necessary,” Charles replies
with a smile. Fury winces, knowing how literally Charles’ means.
When the day arrives, Charles has a difficult time deciding what to wear.
Should he choose austere simple clothing in counterpart to Tony’s own
outrageous mode of dress, or sumptuous and provocative imported fabrics? He has
no idea. Tony’s man sent no particulars along with his signed patron contract,
which could mean one of two things, 1) Tony is a sadistic little bastard who
wants Charles to guess his entire way through or 2) he has never before
contracted the services of a courtesan. Neither supposition gives much in the
way of direction and so Charles finds himself standing in front of his armoire,
clothes tumbling all over the floor.
Moira lounges insouciantly in his bed, her kitten lying with her, absolutely no
help at all.
“You’re excited,” she says, rolling over in a great rustle of skirts.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, distractedly, leafing through doublets
and hose, desperately hoping for an outfit to appear assembled before him.
“You’re putting so much effort into it!” she replies with a laugh. “You haven’t
been excited, since...”
Charles turns to look at her when she trails off, certain she’s going to point
out his endless sniping with Erik. “It’s okay, you can say it.”
She cuddles the kitten close and says with a shrug, “Since Coulson died.”
Charles sighs. It’s at least partially true. He’s mentally simulated sex with
three patrons in the last couple of months, and sent his mind wandering outward
into the city on two others. “I don’t know Moira, he’s simply...interesting?
And he clearly knows of our involvement in Fury’s covert activities. It’s
refreshing.”
“He doesn’t know what you are,” Moira points out. The words aren’t meant to
offend--Moira never means to offend--but Charles’ finds himself stung by them
anyway.
“I know that. But it is what I am, no help for it.”
“Charles, I didn’t mean...”
He sighs. “It’s fine, Moira, just...let it be.”
*
Erik escorts him in silence to a shabby part of the outer city frequented by
students and artists who have not yet secured rich patrons. To Charles it is
not that different from the home he made with Raven in the streets of Night’s
Doorstep.
“How is it that you never seem to get pickpocketed?” Erik asks suddenly,
breaking the silence.
Charles trips over a cobble-stone and Erik has to steady him back on his feet.
“Beg pardon?”
“You never guard your purse, and yet street urchins and lightfingers all seem
to veer away from you. I have never once had to dispense with one.” Erik trains
his piercing green eyes on Charles. “It’s odd.”
“Maybe they simply see my warm smile and decide I’m far too amiable to steal
from,” Charles says, forcing a big grin and then dropping his gaze. Charles is
good at lying, he’s been doing it all his life, but for some reason, lying to
Erik seems unsavory and uncomfortable. Perhaps because there is no artifice to
Erik. At least none that Charles can detect. He has tried desperately not to
skim the surface of Erik’s thoughts, although he can never stop himself from
getting tangled in his dreams. Last night was particularly troubled, though
when Charles tries to grasp at it, the memory slides away in haze of agitation
and fear.
Erik clears his throat and points at the address. “The house with the blue
door, they told us.” The weather eye he casts over it makes Charles laugh. Erik
glances at him. “What? The place looks likely to collapse upon our heads at any
moment.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Charles says, although he feels some trepidations
about the soundness of the structure himself.
“Would you like to continue gawping or come inside?” a clipped voice announces
from the porch, startling them both.
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