Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/945735.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      No_Archive_Warnings_Apply, Underage
  Category:
      F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      X-Men:_First_Class_(2011)_-_Fandom
  Relationship:
      Erik_Lehnsherr/Charles_Xavier
  Character:
      Erik_Lehnsherr, Charles_Xavier, Emma_Frost, Azazel_(X-Men), Original
      Female_Character(s)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_No_Powers, Alternate_Universe_-_Human, Alternate
      Universe_-_Modern_Setting, Past_Underage_Sex, First_Time, One_Night
      Stands, Time_Skips, Sex_Dreams, Masturbation, Second_Chances, Second
      Time, Anal_Sex, Bisexual_Male_Character
  Series:
      Part 1 of Alone,_Together
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-08-28 Words: 4930
****** to be alone with you, again ******
by ninemoons42
Summary
     Erik has spent the last ten years being haunted by the memory of his
     first time - and then he runs into a familiar face at a party.
Notes
     Beta and title suggestion by Afrocurl.
No one’s kiss to initiate, no one’s kiss to lead or to follow: he only knows
about looking into dark blue eyes, into what seemed like timeless and depthless
night, and then - contact. Soft skin, yielding and warm: darting together and
pulling apart to smile, and repeat. Sweet shared breaths, sweat collecting on
skin and staining collar and fingertips.
He knows that he clings, he hangs on for his very life, and he can’t feel sorry
if his grip leaves bruises. He wants to feel the power in the hands upon him,
wants to wake up bearing welcome marks.
A voice, thready, excited, almost cracking with excitement: “More, please,
more.” It must be his voice, it must be him pleading and fighting to get closer
still, because he gets a response, and it’s not in words.
Hot hum against his mouth, electrifying. A sweet coaxing at the seam of his
lips: slick pressure, gently demanding, and he swallows and gathers his
courage, he opens his mouth.
The other boy’s tongue dips delicately into him, tasting the edges of his
teeth.
He freezes. He doesn’t know what to do with his heart hammering away in his
chest like it’s about to burst.
The kiss dissolves, and he makes a noise of - disappointment? Longing? Someone
is asking him a question. He can’t make it out. He’s reeling, he wants, so much
so that he can’t ask for it -
He pulls the other boy back in, mashes their lips together, clumsy with it.
He licks at the corner of the boy’s mouth, tentative, shivering.
Something very much like laughter and very much like a groan rattles through
his mind as the boy takes the hint, as the boy goes back to kissing him: and
this kiss is powerful. This kiss slams him down to his knees. This is a kiss
without gentleness, this is the kiss he wants. He holds on to the boy, drowns
in him, and there is a sensation of being pulled in, closer and closer -
Erik wakes up.
The sheets are covered with sweat. The night hangs around his shoulders, heavy,
too close.
He can feel the phantom brush of a hot mouth against his own, against his skin;
and he can feel the rush of blood in his veins, heavy between his legs.
His hands are still frozen in mid-air, as though he’d been holding someone
close, as though there’d been someone in his lap, struggling to get closer even
as Erik fought to welcome that person in.
But there’s no one here. Alone, a weight on him, oppressive, forcing him to
hunch over and fight to keep the anger, the frustration, the need at bay.
There is a faint scent of roses and cut grass in the folds of the thin sheet.
He can still taste musk and salt and sweat on his lips. There’d been a woman
here; he remembers her now, the echo of her footsteps only a few hours old.
Dark red hair that shone under the streetlights as they sped back here, a lush
mouth, white teeth in two even rows. A ready smile.
He remembers holding her down, remembers her shivering and shaking. One small
foot kicking helplessly, softly, at his ribs. Her hand flattened to his scalp,
her very fingertips vibrating as he pushed her towards the edge, licking and
licking and sucking in a hot breath of her as the final orgasm tore a wordless
cry from her throat.
He’d watched her let herself out. Unsteady steps. A handful of bills tucked
into her purse, a soft sigh, a shocked and appreciative light in her eyes.
Erik groans, now, almost silently. She is not here. There is no one here.
He is alone and he is unfulfilled, and he is close to burning up with it.
He wants to go back to sleep. He fears going back to sleep.
The same dream, over and over again. The same voice, a whisper fanning a blaze,
sweet soft obscenities. Worn cloth giving way to pale smooth skin that enclosed
a powerful desire.
He falls back into his pillows. He’s not falling asleep; he’s wide awake, and
the dream - the memory - plays on in his mind.
Soft words, encouraging. He strips, slowly, too riveted, because the boy with
the blue eyes is just about tearing off his shirt, his jeans, his briefs. The
socks are the last item to go, before the other boy is bared to Erik’s gaze.
Galaxies of freckles whirling on skin, pale and pristine. Erik takes the boy’s
wrist, and the boy smiles and sways close, pulls away the last of Erik’s
clothes. He climbs fearlessly into Erik’s lap. Erik doesn’t know where to look:
pupils blown wide open and a thin rim of blue around the edges. High hot flush
spreading, cheek and throat and collar bone. Tight nipples, erect, the skin
around covered in goosebumps. A sparse trail of dark hair trailing down the
torso, over the soft stomach.
Erik shuts his eyes against the memory of the boy’s cock. Hot to the touch.
Uncircumcised. Dark red and already damp at the tip.
He wants, he’s breathless, because he’s never so much as held anyone’s hand and
then - and then he’s deep in this. Naked and needy and there is a beautiful boy
in his lap. He wants to touch, wants to kiss, wants everything, and he doesn’t
know anything - doesn’t know where to start -
He grits his teeth to no avail; the groan that escapes him is almost, almost in
the shape of a name.
Erik closes his eyes, reaches for his cock. Imagines someone else’s hands
around his wrists - not guiding, not leading. Learning. He imagines someone
else watching with avid blue eyes like the depths of the ocean, paying
attention to how he gets himself off. A certain speed, a certain flick of the
wrist on the upstroke.
Now the scent of sweat belongs almost completely to him, and with it he can
remember, just, a curl of spice and woodsmoke and ash - the boy who’d whispered
soft sweet words to him, lashing him on and on, mercilessly, to the first
climax of that stolen night.
He chokes on the memory of the boy’s name, the memory of the boy’s eyes, as his
nerves pull taut and then the world shatters into pure sensation. He breaks on
the shores of his climax, on the shores of that boy, on the name he’s never
really forgotten:
“Charles,” Erik whispers, and he falls into a restless sleep, hands reaching
out, grasping only emptiness.
///
Night after night he dreams of Charles, and day after day he struggles to hide
the effects of lack of sleep.
On Thursday afternoon Azazel drops into his office, squints at him, and says,
“Go home. I don’t want you looking like death warmed over tomorrow night.”
Erik doesn’t look up from the stack of papers on his desk, but he does take a
moment to wave a middle finger somewhere in the other man’s direction.
“Oh, right, the famous Lehnsherr dry humor,” Azazel says with a dry chuckle.
“But seriously, are you still alive in there? I look at you and I’m reminded of
the corpses from medical school.”
“Which you were at for no longer than a month, if I remember your stories
correctly, and I usually do.” He looks up, then, and fixes Azazel with a
baleful eye. “Get off my fucking back already. I said I was going to your party
- against my will, but I’m going, isn’t that enough? I swear you’re worse than
Emma.”
“At least I’m not thinking about sending you vitamins and freshly-squeezed
fruit juice.”
“At least that stuff’s good for me no matter what.”
Azazel throws up his hands, then, and leaves in what Erik would kindly call a
snit, and he’s free to get up and close the door and lock it - and only
afterwards sink back into his chair, and put his face in his hands.
Again and again the same dreams, getting more and more vivid, pushing him
closer and closer to the brink.
Ten years since one night just before turning seventeen.
///
Emma’s eyebrow twitches.
Erik tops up her tumbler of scotch and shrugs.
She opens her mouth, and he braces himself for an interrogation.
Instead, she says, quietly, “If you’d really rather stay here, if you really
don’t want to go to the party - it’s all right, Erik. You can just call me a
cab and have done with it. I’ll even make your excuses to the others.”
He sighs, shrugs on a worn peacoat, goes to drain the glass that she pours for
him. “I’m pretty sure it’s important to remember the first time Azazel gets
hitched,” he says, trying to speak in a light voice.
In truth he can hear how hoarse his own voice is. He can feel the rasp in his
throat, the inevitable result of screaming through the night, screams that he
muffles in his pillows.
He can hear, in the back of his head, the words that he’s been screaming: a
name, and filthy endearments, and incoherent pleading for more.
But he doesn’t let any of that show, and in the end Emma tosses her hair over
her shoulder and clips out the words “Let’s go”, which is his cue to drain his
glass and hurry out the door in her wake.
///
Azazel’s place is packed wall-to-wall with people whom Erik might actually be
familiar with, if only the lights weren’t strobing and flickering along to the
music. The floor is all but bouncing, up and down and sickeningly sideways,
with the constant bass beat. There are no conversations to be had anywhere, and
there are no such things as quiet corners, because the only way to communicate
is at the top of one’s voice.
He pastes a smile on his face and knows it doesn’t get anywhere near his eyes,
and sits down next to one of the tables, and no one refills the trays of
canapes when all that’s left are stray crumbs and a stack of paper plates and a
thousand greasy fingerprints.
Every now and then Emma flits back to him - but he never says a word. He just
waves her back into the fray, and eventually she stops looking back over her
shoulder because she’s too busy dancing: and she’s beautiful when she dances,
when she gives herself over to the beat, and he’s glad they’re friends and
nothing more.
He wishes he could dance, wishes he could muster up a grin, and he thinks he
almost succeeds at the latter when a woman with red-and-gold streaked hair
jumps up onto Azazel’s shoulders and proceeds to ride him through the cheering
crowd.
Someone brushes past, close enough to make Erik pull his feet back in under
him. When that presence is gone, leaving him inexplicably warm, there’s a half-
full paper cup of something next to his elbow: it smells like shadows and
sugar, and in the fitful light it flashes tawny gold at him.
Erik looks around, and waits for someone to reclaim the drink - and when no one
does he shrugs and puts the cup to his lips, recklessly swallows it all down.
It’s as if he drank the music itself: a restless fire streaks down his nerves,
silver heat, almost blazing.
After, he doesn’t know that he’s moving until he’s outside, with the sliver-
crescent of the waning moon a faraway light in a faraway sky.
He looks over his shoulder. The fire escape door swings shut with a loud thud.
He doesn’t remember pushing through the crowds, and he doesn’t remember running
down the stairs, all the way down ten floors.
All he can do is look up, and blink.
“Or you can look at me,” says a voice from very close by.
A soft voice, a sweet voice, a startling voice.
The world spins around Erik. Strange songs ring in his ears. The streetlights
reach for him with haloed hands.
Above is the noise and the music from the party, and below is the sidewalk and
the cars rumbling past and -
Erik notices the scent when he’s done reeling from the voice, and he sits down
hard on the raised lip of the sidewalk: it’s a scent that’s very nearly an
assault, achingly familiar, overwhelmingly new. Spice, ash, worn leather, sugar
and smoke and flame.
“Hello.”
That voice again.
Erik trembles from head to toe, closes his eyes, opens them again, and he’s
still looking at his hands clenched into fists on his knees, because if this
voice is just a dream, if this voice is just a sham -
If he isn’t actually hearing this voice -
He takes a deep breath.
He looks up.
There is a shadow upon him, and there is a man standing over him.
Light playing in the man’s hair, fleeting illusion of being doubly crowned.
Above his head and the unruly tangle of his hair, Erik can just make out the
points of the crescent moon. The cold illumination of the streetlights casts a
brief illusion of a halo around his face.
Leather jacket, scuffed and studded.
The night that falls around them is full of false shadows and polluted light,
murky and mocking, but Erik can clearly see the shocking blue of the other
man’s eyes. So blue as to be nearly black, so deep as to be nearly bottomless.
Also clear even in the capricious shadows: the man’s scars. Pale skin and
freckles crisscrossed with silvery thin lines. Spiderwebbed years caught and
held fast, commemorated in pain.
Erik’s hand is halfway to the touch before he can think better of it, and the
man is halfway to leaning in, halfway to meeting him.
They catch themselves just in time, and Erik’s eyes grow wide when the man
briefly looks away and then - he smiles.
Because Erik has seen that smile before and dreamt of it and ached for it.
Ten years. A long parade of sleepless nights, of shaking and of needing. Ten
years, and then this smile, once again.
Erik’s voice flees him, and he opens his mouth and no sound comes out of it.
He clears his throat, almost in a panic, and still the best he can do is the
half-rasped words: “I know you.”
“And I you,” the man in the leather jacket says.
But can it be the same man? The face in Erik’s dreams and nightmares is frozen
in the ripe flush of sixteen, while this man bears so many lines in his face.
It takes him another moment to understand what the man has said to him, and
when he finally gets the message he surges to his feet - and immediately blinks
in surprise.
Because when he dreams of this man he looks up into that face, twisted with
pleasure. He looks up into pure lust, into a beautiful grimace.
Here, out on the sidewalk, with music still roaring in his ears, Azazel’s
party, faces and bottles and strobing lights - out here, he’s looking down,
into a sharp and amused smile.
“It used to be easier to look you in the eyes,” the man in the leather jacket
says, sounding a little rueful. “That was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
Erik answers his question with another question: “Is it you? Is it really you?”
He sucks in a breath, but the next words tumble out anyway, one after the
other, hurried haphazard whispers. “You look like someone who spent an entire
night making love to me. You look like someone who was my - my first time for
everything.”
He bears the scrutiny of the man in the leather jacket, the man with the blue
eyes, the man with the scars surrounding his mouth, with a restraint that he
doesn’t know he has in him. How can he think about being restrained? How can he
think about holding back?
A handful of dreams, a hundred thousand nights, innumerable kisses, and this
man wearing the familiar face of a stranger.
“You look like someone who asked to be kissed and who needed to be taught how
to kiss and who I never wanted to stop kissing,” is the answer from the man in
the leather jacket.
The next words that come out of his mouth are drowned out by the long blaring
bleat of someone leaning on the horn of a truck, so he purses his lips, shrugs
in a flowing one-shouldered manner, and Erik’s hands are aching with the need
to touch.
When it’s quiet again, the man in the leather jacket steps closer, looks like
he wants to confide something, and says, “Hello, Erik.”
“Charles.” Erik says the name around the knot in his throat. Desire, shock,
disbelief. He repeats himself. “Is it really you?”
Again that smile - if it is a little bit faded it is still beautiful. He
doesn’t answer, not directly. Instead he offers Erik his hand. “Come with me.”
Erik looks at Charles’s hand, waiting between them. A shard of his dreams plays
out in his mind. Charles’s fingers on Erik’s lips, no pressure, not seeking
entry - just touching, contrast of soft and rough skin, the ragged edges of
bitten-down nails.
That hadn’t been how they’d touched for the first time, but it’s the one he
remembers when he’s not gasping awake from a dream of a rush, of ecstasy
tearing him to pieces.
He takes the offered hand, and just like Charles’s unforgettable face with its
new lines there is something strange and something familiar in the clasp of
Charles’s fingers around his.
He stumbles along in Charles’s wake, blind and insensible, the here and now
whirling through everything he remembers from ten years ago. Everything is far
too vivid. Everything is hyperreal and dreamlike. He doesn’t notice that the
pavement becomes marble becomes a staircase, doesn’t feel Charles leading him
up several flights of steps. Did they go back into the building with Azazel’s
party? Have they gone somewhere else?
Drunk again, desperate again: Erik can feel the blood in his veins, now and
then. Tawny light, Charles’s scars, the sharp sulfur scent of a match being
struck.
Erik blinks. They are no longer outside.
The room is just barely big enough for the bed. The frame hugs the floor, and
there are curtains strung up around it. A pile of soft things, pale shades
reflecting the flickering uncertain light.
Erik looks around, dazed, to find that Charles is still moving around the room,
striking matches, lighting candles. The room grows warm and then stifling as
the light grows brighter, more alive.
When Charles comes to a stop he is directly opposite Erik. The bed sprawls
between them, wide expanse, untouched.
“It’s not as it was ten years ago,” Charles offers, after a moment. Sweet
honeyed rasp in his voice, soft groan of relief as he toes off his boots, steps
out of his socks, strips the leather jacket away to reveal a faded henley that
clings to his shoulders and to his chest.
Erik stares. He can’t think. He can’t say a word.
He wants to reach out to Charles, wants to hold him, wants to make sure that
he’s real, that he is who he says he is.
As he watches, Charles moves through the curtains, climbs into the bed, sits up
next to the pillows. A smile tinged with smoke. “Come here?”
Erik goes, still wrapped up in all of his layers despite the warmth of the
room, despite the glow of the candles.
Charles cocks his head, doesn’t stop looking at Erik. “How do I convince you -
”
“How do I know - ” Erik begins.
“ - that it’s me. Yes.” Charles beckons to him. Fingers, crooking, reeling him
in. Closer, until Erik has to brace himself on the comforters; closer, until
he’s so close that he can smell Charles. Every breath almost suffocates him.
Spice and sweat and syrup. “Come,” is Charles’s whisper, right against Erik’s
mouth. “Kiss me. Do you remember - ”
Erik closes the distance, crosses the last sliver of space.
It’s a kiss, a chaste one, soft and warm.
It’s a kiss that leaves him shivering, makes him want to pull away and dive in
at the same time - but he does neither. His very blood runs molten in his
veins. He’s locked where he is, his mouth brushing against Charles’s.
“I remember you,” Charles murmurs, just, and then there are hands on him.
Erik falls into the path of Charles’s kiss, falls into him: all his yesterdays
and his dreams and the right now shattering together into this contact, into
Charles teasing him and tasting him. It’s too much, it’s not enough, and Erik
groans and grabs Charles, kisses him and clings to him and he opens his mouth,
sucks hungrily on Charles’s tongue.
His layers are being pushed away. His peacoat, his belt. The blankets beneath
him are warmer than Charles’s hands. He lets Charles slide a trouser-clad thigh
between his legs, holds Charles in place by his hips, and all this time they’re
kissing. Charles steals his breath, again and again, and Erik can’t pull away,
won’t.
Someone is moaning and the small room amplifies that voice, that helpless
wordless pleading, that is answered with an inarticulate growl and there’s no
way he can make out who’s asking and who’s answering - he’s drowning, he’s
clutching at Charles’s shirt.
Something rips, and that sound is shockingly loud, too.
Erik opens his eyes, and sucks in a surprised breath.
Charles’s shirt hangs partly open, exposing his freckles and his scars.
Laughter, soft and quiet, and the light in Charles’s eyes is inviting: he wants
Erik to laugh with him.
Erik just feels dismayed. He lets go of Charles, looks away, mutters an
indistinct apology.
But Charles just laughs and shrugs the rags off, and then he tugs on Erik’s
hems, once. The smile on his face is halfway between pleading and feral. “Can
I?”
The words shock Erik back to the moment, to this place and to this time and to
this meeting, and the question falls out before he can stop himself: “Charles.
I - what - this - ” He gestures around them, at the smell of burning wax, at
the curtains, at the warmth of Charles’s body over his.
He watches Charles’s eyes narrow, considering him, considering this,
considering the years. “We had that night and I left,” is the reply, succinct.
“I wanted to tell you that I had to leave, I didn’t have a choice then, and
that the last thing I wanted to do was leave you. I wanted to stay. I wanted
you to hold me, I wanted you to wrap yourself around me.”
“I looked for you,” Erik says, because it is the truth.
“And I wanted to turn back to you. Every step of the way.”
“So why didn’t - ” Erik looks away, looks down, looks anywhere but at Charles.
“I’m sorry. You’ll tell me that’s none of my business.”
“It isn’t, but I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything,” Charles murmurs. “Can
it wait, though?”
“Wait on what?”
He doesn’t get a response in words; he gets a response like this: Charles
leaning in, smiling, until he’s too close and Erik can’t see his smile any
more, because Charles is kissing him. Kisses like rain, soft and slow and then
falling faster and faster.
This is better than a conversation. This is better than regrets. This is better
than ten years of waking and feeling thwarted.
This time, Erik strips off without waiting to be asked. Need sears him now to
the bones, down every inch of his every nerve. He watches Charles’s hands move
in a stuttering kind of movement, too quickly and too slowly at the same time
as he works at the fly of his jeans, as he shimmies everything else off. He
pushes his own discarded clothes off the bed.
And then it’s just him and Charles again, and it’s not a replay of ten years
ago. This is today. This is here and now. This is the two of them.
Erik’s mouth runs dry as he runs his hands, tentative, questing, over Charles’s
torso. Muscles flutter beneath his fingertips. Familiar flocks of freckles,
strange shiny scars.
Erik leans in, presses a kiss to one round pucker, the skin rough and hairless
and a strange contrast to the rest of Charles. A kiss just over Charles’s
heart. He can feel a runaway beat beneath his lips.
That gets him a soft sound that might have been his name and might have been
something else, a prayer, a plea - and Charles leans down to him, cups his
hands around Erik’s face, kisses him deep, kisses him like he’s drowning.
Erik dives into him, crashes into him, hangs on to him.
Hands pushing him down, the end of one kiss and the beginning of another.
Charles’s hands, burning against him.
Erik arches up, breathless scream, when Charles drags his lips down his throat,
when Charles sets his teeth into the soft skin stretched over one collar bone
and sucks and licks and bites. He moans and he curses and he asks for more.
Charles’s name is the sound that repeats and builds until it falls apart, until
it splinters into helpless gasping.
His hands are in Charles’s hair, now, closed into fists. The first time he
pulls too hard he remembers to apologize - but “Sorry” dies on his mouth when
Charles says “Do it, pull, I want to feel it, I don’t want you to stop - ”
“Charles,” he says, eventually, because he has to say it, because he has to
tell Charles what he wants.
“Erik,” Charles says, and he sounds broken, and he sounds so good.
“Charles, please - ”
“Tell me, Erik, say it, I want to hear it - ”
Erik opens his eyes, struggles to sit up.
Charles is wide-eyed, and his hair is sticking up where Erik’s been hanging on
to him, and the candlelight flickers over his skin, renders him in shadows and
flame-glow. Charles is on his knees, his red mouth a few inches away from
Erik’s cock, and Erik needs him and needs something else, something more.
“Fuck me,” Erik says.
“Yes,” Charles says.
He watches Charles move away, open a box near the bed. Charles holds up a foil
packet so he can see it clearly, and he takes the foil packet from Charles, for
safekeeping - for later use.
More sounds, the click of the box being closed again. Flickering light on
Charles’s hands, occupied with a bottle. Fingers coated with slick.
Erik closes his eyes, lies down fully, opens his legs to Charles. Takes a deep
breath, tries to relax -
Charles’s mouth and hand on his cock, catching him up in burning sensations,
soft swallowing sounds, and Erik is too busy fighting for the next breath and
the next to feel any pain when Charles breaches him: one finger, then two.
Charles opens him up, patiently.
Erik drowns in him: it’s an assault, it leaves him shaking and teetering,
arching up into Charles’s mouth and then driving down onto Charles’s fingers.
Three fingers. Need catches Erik around the throat, leaves him unable to say
even Charles’s name - but he can still respond when Charles rears up and
catches his breath and says, “I can’t wait, it’s too much - Erik - ”
“Yes.” Erik wants.
Charles makes him put his hands up, over his head. Nothing to hold on to.
Fingers spasming around empty space. Charles’s eyes locked on him, watching
him, as he takes the foil wrapper, opens it, rolls the condom on.
Then the breathless moment, lining up, the blunt head of Charles’s cock at his
hole.
Erik stares blindly into Charles’s eyes as he’s taken, as Charles presses in,
slow and sweet and straining.
“Erik,” Charles says.
Erik can’t breathe. He’s too full. He can feel the pulse of Charles, the
thickness of him.
“Move,” says a voice. His or Charles’s or both, it doesn’t matter. Charles
pulls out, pulls away - slams back in.
He keeps his hands where Charles has put them, trusting that there was a point
to the gesture.
There is. Charles reaches up, leans over Erik and seizes his wrists in a
punishing grip, body a taut arc, locked in place. Short sharp thrusts, now -
they can’t get away from each other, they’re fighting to get closer to each
other, Erik no longer content to be done to.
And he can’t last, not like this. He leans up, misses Charles’s open mouth.
“Please,” he says.
Charles lets one wrist go, moves that hand toward Erik’s cock, hard and weeping
against his stomach.
“Don’t,” Erik says, “don’t need it, I can - just, please please please, fuck me
- ”
Charles licks his lips, then Erik’s, and he trembles as he fucks into Erik,
wild and helpless now. Slap of flesh against flesh.
Pressure, pleasure, and the precipice.
Ten years of dreams unraveling, falling apart, into something real, something
in the here and now.
Erik screams, soundless, when he finally falls over his edge - and again when
Charles comes. An instant of whiteout, a brief endless moment of gratification.
Charles lands on top of him, boneless sprawl.
Erik pulls him in, holds on to him.
Time enough, nerves enough, for just one more thing.
“Stay,” Erik whispers. “Please stay please.”
Charles groans and says, just as quietly, “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll tell
you - we’ll talk. I’ll stay. And I want you to stay.”
“Nowhere to be,” Erik says, and he wants that to be the truth.
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