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There’s a beach. There’s a beach and sunlight and silver in the air. There’s a flash of fire, of salt, of rage and grief and pain. There’s Charles, because there’s always Charles. Erik’s head is full of Charles, these days.
He awakens shaking and shaken, the way he so often does.
He opens his eyes and he’s in the Xavier mansion, in the bedroom he shares with Charles because he cannot bring himself to ask whether Charles wishes him to leave and because Charles, at least at first, has needed assistance. Care. Tenderness.
Erik has never been good at tender. And all the screws and joints of antique furniture tighten and twist for an instant, in agony.
Charles is already awake, up on an elbow, reaching a hand out. Erik says, “I’m fine,” and sees the flinch in moonlight-washed blue and hates himself for hurting Charles, for ever hurting Charles. For hurting the person who once gave him everything: submission, a home, the knowledge of love—
He does not know how to speak. He takes Charles’s hand, an apology. “Are you in pain?”
“No.” Charles pushes himself up more, wincing, which means he’s lying, though only marginally so; the flinch is brief and fades. The injury to his back is healing, in complicated ways. Charles can walk again, though they’d feared otherwise for some time. Tony Stark’s genius technology has helped; Erik’s own abilities regarding electromagnetic fields and impulses and internal connections have helped, though they’ve also harmed, because if Erik hadn’t—
Because Erik knows too well that he’s the reason Charles hurts—
He can’t even say he hadn’t meant it. Though he hadn’t. Some of it.
Charles says it’s not his fault. Charles says that it was a choice, one they made together.
Charles is wrong. But arguing with Charles, while familiar and beloved and everything Erik needs in his life, is not a thing he can do right now. Not with healing wounds and scars so fresh.
They have rings. Promises. Circles and symbols that Charles once said yes to. Erik made them.
They had not worn the rings on the beach: nothing for Shaw to see and realize and use against them. They had not had time to say wedding-vows, before everything; they’d spoken about doing so, once.
Erik doesn’t know now if they ever will again. The rings sit in the center of the chessboard by the window, by the two chairs that know the weight and shape of occupants. He’d set them there before the mission, reasoning that Charles would be entertained, that they’d both consider this a logical place. The woven metal, built of so many places their lives have intertwined, glances away from his touch. It’s hurting too.
The world, in the shape of the mansion and the presence of their team—no longer young, all of them fighters now, all of them weary but safe—sleeps. They have been home for three weeks and two days. They have been recovering. Not being Charles, Erik does not know what they dream; he does not know whether they blame him, though several of them—Sean, Alex, Darwin—have gone out of their way to ensure that he feels welcomed here, to tell him this is his home, home for them all, the way Charles wants it to be: a haven for anyone, even those among Shaw’s former followers who choose to come, for as long as they choose to stay. One or two have.
Charles’s sister glares at him but believes him, he thinks, when he says he’s choosing to stay. Hank McCoy does not trust him. Erik sympathizes. That is, after all, the correct position regarding himself. After what he’s done.
What he’s done—
He does not regret all of it. Some of it, yes. Here and now, this moment, this part of it: yes. So very deeply. So much he’d cut his own heart out if it’d help, if he could throw that like a metal projectile at the problem. But he does not regret all of what happened. He can’t.
Charles says that he doesn’t either. Charles says many things, and is not above manipulation, though in general he’s truthful with Erik; they have to be, they’ve agreed. They need truth between them. Among other things.
Charles had agreed with him about killing Sebastian Shaw. Charles, for all the optimism and supposed naiveté, hides unflinching sharp-eyed pragmatism like ruthless claws under fluff and kitten-fur: Charles Xavier knows about bad people, and will make choices to protect his people, whether that means his team or all mutantkind or the entire world.
Erik had been surprised, and then had been surprised by the surprise. He did know Charles; he should’ve guessed. But then he and Charles have always been learning each other. Over and over. More and more.
Charles holds his hand now, both of them wearing pajama pants and soft loose shirts because Erik had worried about the chill in the air and Charles healing and also himself, himself naked beside the man he loves; what if Charles cannot look at him with any kind of desire? What if Charles can never look at him again?
Charles has not asked. Has glanced at him a time or two; has seemed to be about to speak, and has chosen not to. Charles has cold fingertips when Erik touches them, presses tea into them, brings him gloves. Charles doesn’t pull away, but doesn’t laugh and flirt and tease, either. Erik has the impression of waiting, of uncertainty; of course Charles is uncertain about him. Of course Charles doesn’t want to offer naked wrists or kneel or enjoy the sweet cleansing relief of sex. Not with him.
He cannot press the issue. The Erik of months ago—singleminded, obsessed, driven—scoffs at this hesitance, in his head. But that Erik hadn’t known Charles Xavier. Hadn’t loved, been changed by, changed alongside, Charles.
Charles loves being submissive, even masochistic, in a way that Erik had not understood at first—how could someone so bright and powerful choose to yield and break and surrender? But he does understand, or he’d come to, a little: the power in relinquishment, in the choice, and the relief and reprieve of being known and taken in hand and carried into bliss. Charles chooses, as Charles always does: believing in a future, seeing beyond the moment, whether that’s trust in Erik’s hand on him or trust in a course of action that should be the right thing.
Charles had held Sebastian Shaw in place, stayed in his mind amid a broken submarine on a sunlit beach, and Erik had killed Shaw, painfully and excruciatingly. Charles had said nothing about the cost, then.
Erik had only known when shining gold and blue had slipped out of his head. Out of everyone’s heads: and he’d run, desperate, across clutching sluggish sand.
Charles had been unconscious when he’d arrived. Not dying, not physically. Hank McCoy had knelt over him, hands shaking, uncertain. No one knew how to heal a telepath who’d just lived another man’s death in agonizing detail.
Erik had been angry. So angry: the world had forced him to this, Shaw had forced him to this, he’d lost everything, he might lose Charles—
The government, the military, had fired. Out of fear.
Charles had woken. Had tried to stop everything. Erik, swatting bullets, had tried frantically to catch that one, to pull it back—
He’d succeeded. Partly. Charles hadn’t sat up much yet, still pale and injured internally, and Erik had good reflexes, and their suits were reinforced, but—
They’d come home, together. Triumphant, in a way: the humans had stood down, Shaw was dead and most of his minions dealt with, the world at peace, if temporarily so.
And Charles will be all right. In some ways. In others—
Erik doesn’t know, and hates not knowing. He had shaped his life before Charles around certainties: hatred, a mission, a goal he would attain because anything else would be unthinkable. Even when he’d had mysteries to unravel and Nazis to hunt, he’d had the hard fierce rigid compass-needle of his rage.
He says now, under moonlight and a crack in curtains and the matching fracture in his chest, “You’re in pain, Charles. Don’t deny it.”
“Only a moment. Sitting up.” Charles shrugs, which likely is meant as a demonstration. His eyes are so blue, blue as oceans and horizons and promises of another life and second chances. “Do you want to tell me? Your nightmare?”
“No.” The nightmare burns and sears and lingers. Charles dead, Charles dying—Charles bleeding out across golden sand and Erik’s hands, because Erik’s caused this. Erik’s taken him and hurt him and broken him.
Erik loves him. Erik wants him. Erik needs him—needs Charles at his side, touching him with casual wonderfulness, kneeling or bending over the bed or lying across Erik’s lap. Erik needs.
He’s done so much he’s never done before. Taken someone’s hand because he simply had to, in that moment. Fallen in love. Wrapped metal around a slender throat, slim wrists, not to harm but to bring delirious pleasure. Spanked Charles’s exquisite backside until fair skin glowed red-hot and Erik’s hand burned in matching glory and Erik’s heart thundered against his ribs, because Charles gave him this, gave and gave and wanted, and he, Erik, could take and claim and have, because Charles wanted him to have—
He'd never known how deeply that fire, that peace, had laced itself into his core. The simplicity of it lances like lightning, electric: he loves being the one to pull Charles to the edge, into crashing wild ecstasy. He loves it because Charles does and because Charles trusts him so much, believes that Erik’s worthy of so much, puts himself into Erik’s hands and Erik’s intensity as if knowing in his soul that Erik will give him precisely what he needs—
No. Charles had trusted him that much.
Charles does not now. Cannot, surely. Should not.
Erik nearly paralyzed him for good, there on the sand. Erik did kill him. In a manner of speaking. But not untrue.
Charles should never permit Erik’s touch, Erik’s hands, Erik’s cruelty that hurts the way Charles likes, ever again. And Erik cannot leave him, because someone has to care for Charles, because someone has to know Charles, because no one else has ever been given as many pieces of Charles as he once was privileged to hold.
A professor. A leader. A genius telepath. Arrogant. Wealthy. Self-indulgent. Compassionate. Self-sacrificing. Stubborn. A mentor. A hope for the world. Charles is all of those, and shares the facets required with the audiences who require them.
With Erik Charles has knelt and bowed his head and given over control. With Erik, Charles has said, the world grows quiet: space to breathe, to feel, to simply be.
Whoever, whatever, they are for the world: together they’re Erik and Charles.
Or they were.
“Erik,” Charles says, and Erik’s heart creaks under the weight of its own horrible self-knowledge.
Charles tries again, Erik?
“Don’t. Don’t strain yourself.”
I’m fine, now. Or mostly. This isn’t difficult. Honesty transparent as glass, tasting of sun through thick antique library panes. Was it Cuba?
“You know it was.”
“I know you have excellent natural shields, and I was sleeping as well. But I felt it.” Erik, I—I want— A pool dries in the desert; salt hangs in the air. Resignation. Giving up.
Erik understands. How can he not understand, after everything? “I’m fine, Charles.”
You’re not. You won’t talk to me. “Don’t say you are.”
“Talking to you? Right now? I am.” Against his better judgement: I AM.
You barely touch me—you look at me as if— Another emotion slides and twists under that one, slick and sleek as a knife. I need—I’ve been needing—but you only touch me when you’re bringing me tea or helping me sit up, you don’t kiss me, you don’t want to—you don’t want— A burst of images, Erik’s hand in Charles’s hair, Charles on his knees, Charles moaning and spread out across the bed while metal cocks fuck his arse and his mouth as Erik kneels above him. You don’t ask me for any of that and it feels—
You’re afraid, Erik breathes, Erik comprehends. Of course. Charles, his Charles, so fearless in the face of danger if facing danger meant protecting the world or just one life or just one person’s honor—
Of course when Charles finally fears, finally doubts, finally crumbles, it’s because of love. Because Charles loved Erik, and died for it. Of course those images, that need, come with shaken vertiginous feelings: you don’t want that, Charles has phrased it, as if asking a question and hoping Erik will agree.
“Oh, no—” Surprise floods lime-bright and cloudburst-scented through shared thoughts. No. I’m not afraid of you.
But you are afraid.
I’m afraid, Charles whispers, precise and fragile as each step over thinning ice, that we won’t ever—that I can’t ever—that we can’t have what we—we had. What we were.
Erik almost can’t say the words. But he can. He must. Giving shape to the end, the lead, the cataclysm. Because of me.
No! Or—no, not precisely, not the way you—
Because, Erik says, sitting inches from him in their bed, in the canyon of midnight, I killed you.
Charles, astonished, hears the scream and the grief, tastes the iron and blood and regret, feels the heartache that isn’t his own. Takes in the words.
That’s not it. That’s never been the reason, at least not the uppermost reason, for his fear.
“No,” he says. No.
Isn’t it why?
No.
I could hurt you. I HAVE hurt you. “I’ve—everything I’ve done, to you—”
“It’s only another death,” Charles says, “I’ve died before,” and something terrible and stormy changes in Erik’s eyes.
The storm whirls emotion like knotted lightning, as Erik’s mind reacts, lashes out in stunned horror, coils into protective simmering, and recalls and comprehends. Half the knobs on the old-fashioned wardrobe, made of metal, twist and shriek. Door handles rattle. Not frightened ghosts. Only a real and passionate Erik.
Charles, Erik says, and the rest of the thought isn’t words but a memory: swimming indistinct understanding, flickers of Charles’s father, the echo of Charles’s own voice saying he took his own life, a scarlet-cinnamon throb of anguish. You felt it/when he did/you know how it feels/made you feel it again as Shaw/I made you feel it all again/how could I/how could you let me/love you/WHY???
Because I love you. And because you were right, and he was the monster. “And I knew I’d survive. I’ve done it before.”
“If you had told me—” I never wanted to hurt you—
I know. “What would you have said if I had? Oh, Charles, you’ve died once before, don’t help me kill a man who deserves it now?”
Erik, who does not back down, who throws fury and metal at the world, flinches. They both know what he would’ve said.
I knew what I was doing, Charles tells him clearly. I chose.
“And you’re in pain.” Disgust, self-directed, laces wounds and words like salt. How can I touch you/can you want me to touch you/hurt you more/please I’d show you I love you I’d try I’d use these hands to give you pleasure only pleasure but how could you ever/ever believe me, believe that, when I—
Then DO IT. “Please.” He isn’t begging. Not quite.
He wants. He needs. And he is afraid.
Because Erik loves him submissive and dreamy and surrendered. Erik loves being able to give him—to give anyone—that care, that refuge; it’s healing for Erik’s heart, Charles knows. Erik takes a kind of quiet ferocious joy in bringing Charles to incandescent floating heights, and has not touched him for three weeks and two days, other than in assiduous nursemaid ways.
The first week or so he hadn’t noticed much. Lots of healing. Lots of recovering stability, physical and mental. Sorting out emotions left raw and red and reeling. Stumbling over steps, as Tony’s nanotech repaired damage to his body. But Erik had slept, or rather hovered, beside him, and he was healing; Charles had thought they might be all right. They’re home and they’re together. Everything can be solved.
But Erik hasn’t wanted him. And Erik, of everyone, knows how badly Charles needs this. How shoutingly loud and scratchy and overpowering the universe can be. How sensory inputs can rake nails down his spine and through his brain. How the tranquil yielding of submission takes the cacophony away, distills experience to a pure simple essence, and sets him free.
But Erik looks at him now with eyes like fresh graves, and presses the heels of both hands over those eyes, briefly, and lets them drop. Charles, what you’re asking…
You can’t. Or you don’t want to. You don’t want me.
And he is afraid; oh, he’s afraid. He’s afraid because Erik loves that pliant submissive version of him, the him who wants to wear a collar and a ring and a cock-cage of woven metal; he’s afraid because he’s been more himself than he ever has been, and that’s the problem, and that’s what he fears.
He used to fight the submission. He craved it and loathed it. His skin knows the swing of his stepfather’s, his stepbrother’s, fists; his chest had ached with the emptiness and the need for someone to end the craving, but they’d leave, they’d hurt him, they always did, so he could never trust it, so he hated it even as he knelt or bent over or begged.
He has not been a good submissive. Not ever. Too arrogant, too stubborn, too resistant. Too assertive: needing, wanting, demanding. In bed. On missions. Being a leader. Seeing a future.
He makes choices. He gives orders in the field. He argues.
On a beach, or headed to a beach, or after: he did not precisely lie to his Dominant, but he did not tell the truth of how badly Shaw’s death would tear at the seams of his mind. He disobeyed orders about listening to Erik. He disobeyed orders about not allowing himself to be hurt.
But that’s him too: a submissive who believes in the decisions he makes, the cost he’s willing to bear. Who is assertive and argumentative and stubborn. Who knows when he’s right, and when his Dominant is wrong, because Erik is sometimes wrong, and needs to be argued with.
Erik is sometimes right too, and together they’ve fumbled into chess matches and compromises, or they always have before.
But this time he’s injured and he’s been a bad submissive and he can’t easily kneel or take a spanking yet, and he can’t offer penitence or perform penance, and he doesn’t know what to do.
He is afraid. He’s not what Erik needs. What Erik’s discovered he needs.
Erik looks up, in moonlight like blue steel bars. His eyes are pale and resolute. “How can you ask that?” More phantoms scream inside his mind.
“I want you,” Charles says. I want you—I need you—please, Erik, please—
“I don’t understand.” I don’t know how to understand. Erik takes a deep breath. You say you want—but you CAN’T—
“I know I can’t, not everything, not yet—but I’ll heal, I’ll be good, I’ll be better for you, I can promise that.” Please, his thoughts whisper. Please take me and claim me and want me as yours. Please make the aching go away.
The— Erik stops. Their eyes meet over sheet-hills and valleys. The knob of one wardrobe door gives up at last and plops to the floor.
Charles, Erik thinks, very carefully. What is it that you are afraid of? Is it me?
No.
No?
No. Or—only in the sense that—that if you leave, if I’m not— Emotions blur, bleeding. Not enough/not good enough/everyone leaves/Erik please stay/please help me/please don’t go/I’ll try harder…
“But,” Erik says aloud, face washed in moonbeam, mouth and eyes astonished and softer with it, “but—I thought—” No, no, never, Charles, never, I’m NOT LEAVING YOU. Can you hear me? I WON’T.
And the thought growls like thunder and bursts like fireworks and lights up the sky like a rescue-flare, a torch, a beacon. I LOVE YOU.
Charles, swept up in light, holds out a hand. Erik grabs it. The night changes. Or perhaps it changes back. Or perhaps it heals.
Love— He’s shouting it, singing it, whispering it in awe. He tastes pineapple, the tropical fruit he’d once made a joke of a safeword out of, and sugar, and salt and heat, male and unmistakable, the glory of bodies and release. He shoves it all that way and takes Erik’s amazement and love and holds it and knows it. Love you/I’m not afraid of you/never was/never will be/you’re my Erik/only afraid that you wouldn’t/if you know me and I’m not what you/not everything you need the same way you’re mine—
“You’re mine,” Erik says. MINE. His fingers wrap around Charles’s wrist. They squeeze. Charles gasps in pure thrilled pleasure.
“You want me to show you.” Erik’s eyes, words, thoughts are ablaze. I won’t hurt you—your back—but I can do this, I can give you this, I’m here, and you want me to be here—
I need you, Charles thinks, and pushes the swell and arch of arousal that way, wreathed in leather and steel clamps and the rush of heated blood and the pulse of his cock stiffening between his legs.
I didn’t know. I didn’t know you felt—I thought—
I know what you thought. And I know what you were dreaming, earlier. And I’m still here. He twists his wrist in Erik’s grip, not to get away, merely to feel it. They’re both alive. “I’m here.”
“You’re here.” Erik reaches over. Takes Charles’s chin in the other hand: forcing him to look up, holding him in place, studying his eyes. “And I want you.” I want you, Charles, as you are. At my side. With me in any fight.
Between us and the world, or between us, ourselves, having an argument?
Erik laughs in the same way Charles has meant the question: rueful, bruised, wry and spring-sharp as crushed dandelions beginning to recover. Both. You make me remember how to do that.
To laugh?
To love someone. To want someone. To know that they’re the best person I’ve ever met, challenging and infuriating and brilliant beyond measure. I want you over my lap with your arse red from my hand, you understand, Charles, for even thinking that you wouldn’t be exactly who I love.
Charles just lets the laughter and the reprieve and the giddy tumult and the yearning burst and billow and flood all through them both, and meets Erik’s eyes, and smiles.
“So,” Erik muses. “How do we do this?” I am NOT inclined to hurt you.
Not even a little?
Erik sighs. Fingers tighten on Charles’s face. “No.” Not very much.
I can live with that. “Should I lie down? Perhaps let you tie me to the bed?”
“We’ll see, Charles.” The desire foremost in Erik’s thoughts is for the removal of clothing; Erik makes this happen for them both, with pointed care, until they’re entirely naked amid shadows and humming metal and antique wood and creamy heavy sheets. Now. What position does not place weight on your back? On your stomach, perhaps? Lie down for me.
Charles does, hastily. His back continues to wear bandages—mostly just a covering, a reminder, protection—and the nanotech has done wonders, and he’s not really very sore, he just shouldn’t strain himself too much. Erik winces slightly—they both feel it—at the sight, but Erik’s also trying hard; long fingers brush the edge of advanced-technology protective fabric, and Erik’s thoughts murmur about gladness and having him alive.
That’s how I feel as well. Happy. Being here with you.
“Lie still.” Erik rests a hand over his backside. Love you. “I think…restraints, yes, so that you don’t exert yourself…”
Metal shifts, wriggles, slides. Charles, head turned to one side, cheek settled into sheets, can’t quite see but guesses Erik’s taking advantage of all those metal decorative accents, drawer-knobs, lamp-pull strings.
The metal settles around his wrists, his ankles. Binding him to the bedposts, legs tugged apart, spread out and vulnerable.
Shimmering deep space, that headspace, tempts. Beckons. Coaxes him. He’s Erik’s, he’s pinned down and spread wide for Erik, face-down on their bed with the hard jut of his cock pushing into the sheets, as it drips and leaks suddenly, loving the position and the exposure and the humiliation.
“Oh, Charles. Look at you.” Erik’s hand strokes his backside. Then Erik’s nails scratch lightly over his skin.
Charles’s skin, already prickling with need and over-sensitive, lights up. He moans.
Erik does it again. And again, leaving pink marks—Charles knows they must be pink, can feel the lines sinking into his soul—as another small coil of metal slips around Charles’s throat, flattening, encircling.
Charles whimpers, or sobs, or pleads for more. His thoughts fade and dwindle, white and blue and airy, growing lighter.
Erik plays with his upturned arse more. Rubbing, scratching, spanking ever so lightly. Sensation after sensation, unpredictable and consequently euphoric and soothing. Charles lies tightly bound, Erik’s metal a dangerous coil of love and trust at his throat, and feels every drop, sinks into every wave, dissolves into every pool.
He’s making soft small sounds. He’s openmouthed against sheets, mouth a little wet. He’s rocking his hips instinctively, rubbing against the sheets and the mattress. That feels good. Something feels good. The hard hot length that’s a glowing throbbing part of him feels good, all wet there too, slickness dribbling between his stomach and the bed. He wants to giggle, to laugh, though he doesn’t know why; everything’s a bit hazy, delicious, delirious.
Erik says something. Indistinct. Erik’s thoughts are amused, aroused, radiant as light glinting from bridges and buildings and iron artworks. Oh, Charles. Did I say you could move?
Charles just moans, long and liquid.
Metal pulls at his legs. Further apart. Then fingers touch him. Behind his balls, and then the weights themselves, rolling, teasing, fondling. Then—something else, colder, more metal—and it slips up and thins out and wraps itself around, oh, around his cock, taking away the feeling of himself rubbing against the bed, sheathing him in unrelenting caged firmness that tightens just enough to make him cry out, dazed, inarticulate, glorying in it.
“Ah. You like being chastised. But you do, don’t you, Charles? You need to feel it.” The metal at the tip of his cock, his poor confined cock, twists and presses and—and pushes in, the slimmest of rods, unfurling into his cock-slit where he’s so wet and dripping, and electric bursts crash through his entire body as Erik strokes metal inside his cock and then keeps it there, stuffing him full even there.
Charles is sobbing now, and Erik’s hand is still resting on his backside over pinknesses and scratches, and he can’t think, can’t do anything, can only spasm and convulse in blind ecstasy, though his movements are only twitches because he’s held so securely in place. He’s never felt so much like flame, amber and gilt leaping and flying in showers of sparks.
His body jerks, shudders, eases. Languid. At peace. In Erik’s hands. Given over. Serene.
Erik strokes a finger—probably a finger, from the feel—between the curves of Charles’s arse, which must be well-colored by now, and caresses the rim of his hole, gently; new metal slips along and holds him open for display.
He drifts, luminous, soaring.
Erik flicks a finger. A snap. Against his hole. Clamoring sensations sing and cry. Tiny fire-flowers scamper all over his body. His cock, plugged, can do nothing, though some wet drops seep out around the penetration at the tip; he can feel them trapped inside the metal cage.
Erik does that one again, obviously liking the reaction. His thoughts reinforce the action: mine/so beautiful/love/yes this forever please/so amazed/so in awe of/he’s so perfect/so perfect/my Charles.
Erik rubs at his hole this time, rub rub rub, a tease and a tantalization; Charles’s body flutters, clasps at nothing, craves to be full. But he is Erik’s, and Erik will decide; he eases, calmed by the knowledge, and floats.
Erik hurts a few other places just a little, not much, as well: light taps against his balls, and to the sensitive spot behind them, a few times. Erik doesn’t truly want to hurt him, only to make him feel the intensity. His own helplessness. Erik’s possession of him.
Erik says words, aloud and not. Praise. Adoration. Admiration. Promises to be gentle, to take care of him, the way he needs. The way Erik knows he needs.
Erik moves; weight shifts, and shifts back. A sudden coolness drips over Charles’s hole, where metal still holds his arse-cheeks spread for Erik’s pleasure. Lube, he understands distantly. And Erik’s fingers push into him, pumping, penetrating; Erik’s fingers are long and skilled and they stroke and move just right and suddenly Charles is wailing, stiffening in place, all of him gathered up and breaking apart with iridescence, but he can’t come and can’t release, with his cock sheathed and plugged and gripped in an unyielding beautiful endless torment…
He feels the whole universe go blank and clean and radiant, for some uncounted time; he’s coming, or passing out, or splintering to crystal pieces, or all of those at once.
He does not quite wake up, in the glittering aftermath, though he does come back to awareness more. It’s a dreamy drugged sort of awareness, limp and quivering and rippling with euphoric color. He’s heavy, drowsy, content to be rocked amid sensations and experiences.
Something touches his mouth. Metal, but warm, and shaped like a cock; he parts his lips and suckles at it, messily. He thinks that Erik, who feels metal, can no doubt feel at least some of that sensation; he makes a wordless noise, a laugh or a mumble, and suckles at it more, obedient and devout.
Warmth bends over him. Familiar. Strong. Crackling and complex, made of edges and shadows and light and love. Erik. Leaving a kiss behind a shoulderblade, a touch to Charles’s cheek; asking a question, not in words.
Yes, Charles sends back on a cloud of lazy spun-sugar want. He opens both eyes, sees Erik’s face bent close to his, and lets the nearness and care carry him deeper. Yes, take me, fill me, yes, please, so good, I want, yes.
And Erik moves, and that thick blunt weight nudges Charles’s hole and then pushes in, in and in, Erik’s length and girth stretching him so well. He’s strangely hyper-aware and yet not, feeling every inch as Erik sinks home but registering it all as an blurry ceaseless ocean of pleasure.
Erik is careful not to put much weight on him, holding himself up awkwardly; Erik asks a question in the form of an image, and Charles thinks the yes—he’s still got metal occupying his mouth—and Erik cautiously uses the bonds on his legs to reposition him, to lift him and his hips so that Erik can kneel behind him and thrust.
Charles does not have to take his own weight; Erik’s power does that. He loves the feeling: Erik handling him, positioning him, as he drools a bit around the cock in his mouth and his own cock stands up in its metal package, jutting into the air, lifted from the bed.
Erik begins to fuck him harder. Deeper. Not without care—Erik’s paying attention, and the bandage across Charles’ back scrawls a reminder—but with trust in Charles: in his honesty about himself, his readiness for this, his ability to stop them both if need be.
He needs this. They need this. He tumbles deeper into it.
Erik’s cock pounds the place inside him that makes him moan and grunt around the weight filling his mouth. He thinks he’s coming again, if this is coming: not a peak but a seemingly endless rolling coruscation, a tide pulled in and out and in and out as his body’s rocked by thrusts. Erik holds him steady.
Erik whispers something, thinks Charles and mine and love and yes this; a slither of metal, body-warm, wriggles in alongside Erik’s cock, deep in him, heating up and sparking and vibrating, both of them feeling it. Erik groans and tenses and slams into him, fingers biting over Charles’s hips. A burst of wet hot release fills Charles’s insides, pumps into him, washes through him and leaves him paradoxically cleansed.
Erik, remaining buried in him, strokes his hip. The metal encasing Charles’s poor aching cock ripples and strokes him too; the line of metal inside him shifts. Charles whimpers, head dropping against the bed. The cock in his mouth stirs, bends, twists sideways: something like a bit on a bridle, stretching his mouth. It’s filthy and obscene and he wants to come like this. He knows he cannot empty his cock and balls unless Erik, his Dominant, permits it; he thinks cloudily that Erik will, Erik likes that, though it’s Erik’s decision. Giving him what he needs.
The metal opens. The line remains inside his cock, but air kisses his shaft, the head; startled, he whimpers, babbles around the bit, clenches his hole around Erik’s still-hard presence in him. Erik murmurs his name, sounding impossibly reverent, and reaches a hand, a real long-fingered hand, warm and firm, to stroke him.
Charles cries. He’s strung out and dizzy and exhausted and utterly, wholly, entirely surrendered. He has no control. He’s Erik’s. And that certainty takes the world and makes every clashing note into high soaring harmony.
Erik’s metal slips slowly from the slit of Charles’s cock, almost drop by drop, as if it’s his release, as if he’s coming in strange metal pearls, and Erik whispers, Come for me, Charles, my Charles, like this, how you want it, how you deserve, the way you deserve to have what you want, just like this, while I give it to you…
Charles does come, on the words and the sensation, the anguish and the brilliance. His cock feels open and used and too sensitive and too much, and it’s wondrous: his come bubbles up and laces each nerve-ending with comets, as his hips jerk, as it spills free to the sheets below, not a violent eruption but something new and different, a kind of climax that simply pours peacefully out of him in a draining annealing emptying-out.
Erik’s hand pets his length; Erik’s fingertip caresses his tip, his well-used slit. Charles can hold nothing back at all, mind emptied out too, heedless of everything but bliss, and his cock dribbles some more liquid over Erik’s finger. He might have wet himself, pissed himself, just a bit, a few loose drops; he doesn’t know. He's lost among faraway streams of weightless light.
Erik caresses his slit one more time, and all the light gathers up and sweeps over Charles’s head, a wave cresting, a profound simplicity entering his bones, and then he falls out of time for a while.
He awakens lying across Erik’s lap, more or less; Erik’s cleaned them up, tucked helpful metal away—almost all of it; one coiled strand remains, and it makes Charles smile once he feels it—and is sitting up, back against pillows and the headboard, and stroking Charles’s hair and back and backside. In dim joyous light he’s stunning: lovely, because Erik always is lovely, with those angles and muscles and passions, but somehow younger, lighter, contemplative. He’s smiling faintly, painted in the silver of moonlight and indigo night.
Charles, whole body lax and sated and pink as cotton candy, turns his head enough to gaze up there and drink in the sight. You feel marvelous.
I do feel marvelous, I think. Shyly, as if Erik himself isn’t certain of how that ought to feel but suspects it’s right. “And you…are you…”
Equally marvelous. He exhales, rests his head against Erik’s lean weight. Quite tired. Good heavens, you’re inventive.
But you enjoy it. That’s not, or mostly not, a question: Erik felt it too, right there with him. “You look lovely yourself, Charles. Still a bit pink, here—” Fingers brush his arse. “And so very well-fucked. And all mine.” Mine, say his thoughts. And also: yours.
“Yes,” Charles agrees, answering all of the above. “I love the way you fuck me, Erik.” I love you. And I’m yours, and you’re mine, and we’re each other’s. Whatever comes next, whatever we face or fight—we’re here. We’re both here. Together.
He stirs, discovers the ability to lift a hand, touches his throat. Where Erik’s left a collar, a thin curl like a vine, simple and graceful and elegant in neat metal. In their metal: pulled from places in their bedroom.
Erik smiles more, too, watching. Something else stirs, over on their chessboard. A clatter, small and tentative and settling back down.
Charles blinks, not awake enough yet to process. What—?
Nothing, if you don’t want to—or not yet— But the image is the rings, their rings, their vow and their symbol: the other jewelry to mirror the delight around Charles’s throat.
“Yes,” Charles says. Yes, Erik, yes!
You still want—
I want. I want EVERYTHING. You know me and wanting. “I do.”
Erik’s eyes light up more. Rings dart through the air and dangle before them.
Charles holds out a hand. His ring, the one Erik made for him, carrying all their history, slides on. Slides down. Comes home.
Erik says softly, “You should rest, Charles, you’re still healing.” But his thoughts are full of happiness, of Charles’s bare skin, of keeping warm, of repair and renovations for the mansion and in particular the infirmary, and of a future.
“You,” Charles informs him sleepily, “can fix all the knobs on our bedroom furniture tomorrow, thank you,” and curls up more into Erik’s fireplace heat, a hearth and a heart, and closes his eyes. Right now hold me. Wedding-planning—properly this time, and let’s not get interrupted by villains with fantasies of world domination!—in the morning, with the rest of the horde.
“Wedding-planning,” Erik echoes, bemused, as if realizing that they do in fact have a family, their family, who’ll all have opinions, noisily so. “Perhaps we should do it quickly. And quietly.” Charles?
“We can’t disappoint the children that way.” Yes?
“They’re not children any longer, and I’m entirely fine with disappointing them if it means avoiding Sean’s sense of humor.” You’re happy. That is…you feel happy. Here. This house, this life…saying yes. With me.
“They’re not children, I know,” Charles concedes, waving a hand, letting it drop onto Erik’s splendid chest, “and neither are we, and we’re all doing this together.” Their family. All around them. Sharing the day. Erik, he can tell, wants that as well; it’s only grumbling, and Erik wouldn’t be Erik if not, and Charles adores him.
Charles will walk down an aisle with him. Will be able to walk with him. At his side. The two of them healed and healing, facing everything, taking on that future, wearing matching rings. And Charles wearing something else, Erik’s collar and Erik’s metal, in the bedroom. “And, to answer your question…yes, I am. Very. And I’m saying yes to everything, with you.” OUR house, Erik. Our life. Yes.