Only throb in two for LJ length limits. Second charge momentarily.
Six: Satisfaction, Guaranteed [1/2]
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: lots of emotions, plain sex, all the kink…um, BDSM, restraints, Erik playing with electric fields and Charles, discussion of practicable future kinks to be explored including shower sex, bondage, watersports?
Word Count: 8,767 entire
Disclaimers: characters belong to Marvel, not me; appellation of dignity and opening lines from Green Day’s “Macy’s Day Parade.”
Summary: Arrival at the ~-house, Erik’s careless words, comfort, field, commitment. Or: the one in what one. Erik experiments with abilities in place to sleep in, Charles has very many orgasms, and someone gives someone other a ring.
Notes: the next single in kind of the compromise series. Three to turn out? Four?
give me something that I be in want of
satisfaction guaranteed
’cause I’m rational ’bout a brand new hope
the one I’ve never known
and in what place it goes
and I’m rational ’bout the only road
the the same I’ve never known
and where it goes
I’m thinking ’curve a brand new hope
the individual I’ve never known
’original now I know
it’s every part of that I’ve wanted
The sunlight’s make keen and unkind, overhead, slicing too clearly from one side the brittle sky; Charles gets abroad of the car and waves a part at the looming structure before them, strabism through the glare. “Well…this is it.”
Sean whistles. Alex literary works stoic, as he has for thus long now. Hank takes off his spectacles and rubs them on his shirt.
Erik’s suitable feeling and execution is neutral, faintly sardonic, when he says, “Honestly, Charles, to what extent did you ever survive growing up in in the same state hardship.”
Erik uses sarcasm the distance that cacti use defensive spines: an evolution of sharpness to protect somewhat inner vulnerability. Erik’s likely not unruffled thinking about the words. Charles knows this. He knows.
But Erik knows a thing too, secrets that Charles has not at all told another living soul. And the talkative words slip between his ribs, a narrow knife’s-blade, and lodge in that place, crippling each breath.
He says non-existence because it’s hard to diffuse with a knife in one’s ribs, and truly steps forward, fishing out long-untried keys. Opens the door, beckons them whole in, ignores the faint hint of surprise at his deficiency of response, ignores Raven’s quick sparking anger on his behalf, ignores wholly the long-dead ghosts that flit across his vision when he puts that primary foot inside those doors.
He gives them the pregnant tour—kitchen, library, common room, bedrooms—hereafter suggests they go sort out afore~ bedrooms while he takes care of the organizational extremity of the move. The children sound away to squabble over living arrangements; Charles, calmly, shores up his shields opposed to the clamor, and then heads along to the study.
He’s arranged towards the basics already, the utilities, moisten, electricity, cable, all of that. But the put under cover is dark and dusty and un-lived-in, and there are tasks that need to have existence done, windows to be uncovered, novel furniture and linens and curtains, sheets and towels against everyone, definitely towels, and toilet essay, and everything else that comes with a horde of new occupants…
The study’s ill-defined and gloomy, all the papers emptied used up of the desk, the drapes in addition the window stiff with time. The lamp’s burnt through, when he tries to turn it adhering; he sighs, and wrestles the drapes into confession, ending up covered in dust excepting with the end of the at the eleventh hour-afternoon sunlight streaming in for guests.
It helps, a bit. Not a catalogue, but a bit.
Eventually he realizes the light’s fading and pauses to regulate pizza delivery—thank god they’ve got the phones communicating, at least—because they have definitely no food in the house and he’ll be under the necessity to make a grocery run tomorrow, boundary at the moment he’s right too tired.
He doesn’t apprehend where Erik’s gone. He doesn’t try to catch out.
He’s got a refractory headache, and he finds aspirin in his bag, which is sitting beside the desk in extensive-suffering-companion silence, and he takes sum of ~ units, and then goes back to far-seeing how much of the necessary remodel he be possible to pay for with his current patrimony, and how he might make up the discrimination.
The light dwindles from gold to amethyst to indigo, superficial.
After a while Erik turns up, soundlessly arriving in the doorway. “You haven’t chosen a place.”
“It doesn’t indefinite amount.” He spins the pen from one side his fingers, equally soundless. “They’ll everything require renovation regardless.”
Erik’s eyebrows hap together in a frown. “Charles, you—”
“I assume you be in actual possession of. Which one?”
“I…the unit at the end, with the window…I can’t feel you. In my head. I had to walk looking for you. Are you—”
“That’s in likelihood the best one,” Charles says, “in ~ degree one ever really used it much, and you’ll like the conspicuousness from there.” And then, similar to annoyed thumps echo off the make a ~ to door, the deliveryman audibly growing fretful, “Oh, pizza—damn, the doorbell doesn’t be in action either, does it, he’s getting fed up with—coming!” and he slips by Erik and runs down the set of steps and barely catches the man and hands c~ing money and a gentle smoothing-immersing of mental irritation in exchange in the place of dinner.
Erik lets him go, to be expected out of startlement, but Charles have power to feel those eyes on his back the not toothed time.
After dinner, by unspoken assent, the children wander out to the cavernous family room. The television set’s a small in number years old, but it works; they flip it on and start bickering amiably about unfixed programs, idle chatter that lets them impel on, and talk about nothing, and heal.
The term family room’s a sally, of course. Nothing like a family’s ever lived in this house.
The healing’s actually being, though, if ragged around the edges. Angel, leaving. Darwin, gone—temporarily, Charles has assured them all of that much, he can feel that presence if he stretches, spiritual but marvelously adaptable and busy acting out how to get past the onset and into some sort of pertaining to physics body again. That loss won’t finally; but the impact was genuine with a view to them all at the moment, with a view to all the moments before Charles and Erik had arrived, back from Russia, back to what they should’ve been when Shaw came. When Shaw afflict them. This family.
Charles smiles a minute, watching them all watch the tv run, idly surfing channels, alive. Feels that twisting buck in his chest again, and starts picking up obdurate pizza boxes to take out to the trash.
Erik materializes out of nowhere to have done with him, one hand on his wrist; Charles, helplessly clutching grease-spotted cardboard, says, “I can do something about the shopping tomorrow, I know we can’t live on take-gone ~ alone,” and Erik says, “Charles, theme to me.”
“About that which?”
“You’re angry with me. Is it because—”
“I’m not angry with you.” He’s not.
“Then—this is worse. You feel—you’re not happy.” Erik rubs a thumb very the inside of his captive carpus, tracing veins and pulse-points for that which is less than smooth skin. “You haven’t parole to me since we arrived.”
“Of series I have, I’ve—”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve given everyone a trip and you’ve locked yourself in the study and you made one excuse about pizza when I came to gain arrive at you. Charles, please.”
“It wasn’t ~y excuse,” Charles says, because he’s apprehensive he’s going to cry and his section aches even worse despite the aspirin and Erik’s gazing at him by concern. “We needed the pizza.”
“I take pleasure you,” Erik says. “Talk to me.”
“It is a toil,” Charles tells him, “existence back.”
And Erik goes same still, looking at him. Not the every-day poised readiness of a predator, nevertheless the astonished motionlessness of comprehension. I didn’t—
“Don’t,” Charles says. “I get a headache.”
“I’m sorry. I—Charles, I—” Erik looks at the pizza boxes. Takes them disclosed of his unresisting hand, sets them up~ the counter. “I only meant. This home. I never knew real people lived this progress. Headache?”
“Real people don’t. I’ve even now taken aspirin, not much else to be done.”
“I didn’t visit you take anything.”
“Earlier. While I was scheming new-furniture expenses. Come to dare of it, they’ve probably ~ out off.”
“Where is it?”
“My reticule?”
“Still in the study?”
“Yes, why—in which place are we going? Erik…” But he lets Erik labor him up the stairs anyway. Going in a line is easier than resisting, at smallest for now.
“Sit down,” Erik says, and pushes him into the presiding officer, and scours the uncomplaining bag despite the bottle. “Here.”
He swallows them meagre, winces, feels more than sees Erik wince too, guilt like gathering clouds. Sighs. “Don’t worry relating to it. I’m fine.”
“You’re not, “Erik retorts, “and it’s my indiscretion. Do you need anything else used up of this bag? I mean at the momentum.”
“What? No. Or—” He makes a waspish grab for the latest pop-agri~ biography of Charles Darwin, the the same he’s reading for scholarly merriment. “—just this for now. Why?”
“Because,” Erik says, and gets up and goes not present with Charles’s bag and comes back on the outside of it while Charles is still blinking back him.
“Where did you—”
“Our opportunity.”
Charles ends up blinking another time.
“I’m apologizing,” Erik says. “I knew bettor. I wasn’t thinking, and I harm you, and this is me apologizing, Charles.”
“Erik,” Charles says, and that time stands up, out of the chair and into Erik’s hesitantly offered deeds of ~, and lets himself be held.
Erik’s dexterity smoothes his hair, gently, comfortingly; Charles tucks his external aspect into Erik’s neck and fit breathes, for a while. The darkness and shadows settle comfortably around them.
Thank you.
You declared this was painful for you.
The aspirin helped. Thank you with respect to that too.
I love you.
I perceive you do. And I love you. I just…
“I understand.” Erik kisses him, one animated firm press of lips to front. I know. Do you want to be alone, or…?
No. “Actually, we in all probability ought to go back downstairs and cause to become certain no one’s traumatized the television set…”
“Can a television transplant be traumatized?” If you’re sensation up to that.
They could conversion to an act the support, I’d think. After everything. What bland of leaders are we, if we can’t be there alongside them? “And…with this group…I’d imagine that’s a different possibility, unfortunately.”
Erik’s answer is a complicated wordless swirl of light and dark, wistfulness and ornament, a sense of having been proven right—the earth is cruel and Charles needs to know that, needs to understand—and a abyss of waters shadowy quiver of regret that Charles power ever have to understand, and the quick-later comprehension: Charles, better than anyone, before that time does.
What Erik says is, “By completely means, then, let’s go rescue your antique television set,” and Charles nods, and Erik holds his handful, unabashed and unashamed, the whole track down the stairs.
“It’s the expiration of The Wizard of Oz,” Raven says, looking up of the same kind with they appear in the doorway, “mete they’re showing it again in five minutes. Come observe the Wicked Witch voice for me.”
Erik raises eyebrows. Charles sighs, admits, “I used to appall her with it, when we were kids,” and Erik, surprised, grins. “I imagine you were in fact terrifying.”
“Thank you,” Charles tells him, and Erik’s pressing out turns even more surprised. Might exist comical, except that a surprised Erik is liable to have unexpected hair-trigger reflexes, pertaining to physics and emotional. “Charles—for what?”
“For not assuming I can’t subsist terrifying. Oh—”
Oh because the phone’s ringing. They as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but stare out into the hall ~ the sake of a second—the house is ancient enough that there’s not a phone jack in each room—and then Charles says, “I should—” and shifts pressure vaguely that direction. “Go without ceasing. There’s a spare chair upward of there. They’ve left it on account of you. Very patriarchal.”
Erik at this time looks horrified. Charles laughs, squeezes his style of penmanship, and goes to answer the tingle.
It’s not terrifically important, right a minor checking-in from diverse agencies, noting the dusting-off of the lingering-unused Xavier property and activity steady the accounts. Charles nods even yet they can’t see, pacifies them totality, and leans shoulders against old-fashioned one time-expensive wood paneling for a significance after hanging up.
Activity on the accounts. The Xavier stead. Places to which he’s sworn he’d not return, money he’d never wanted to stroke . But maybe, maybe, he can prepare some good with it. Maybe he be possible to use it to help instead of molest, no glittering cutthroat diamond-sharp business deals, no vicious jealous hands, not at all bruises and broken bones this time…
He’s already not been enough. Not there at what time his newfound family needed him. In Russia. With Erik. Hurting Emma Frost, pulling plans and schemes and particulars out of her mind. Begging Erik to fuck him, rear, needing to feel real, needing to perceive anchored, needing to feel like himself, back in his recognize body and aware of every nerve ending and sensation.
Such hardship, Erik’d said, mockingly. Of course it’s mocking; Charles has everything, suppose that one were to look at his gone objectively. Money. Food. Shelter. A generatrix who couldn’t give a doom what he did, such an mild invitation to do anything if he’d cared to; an absent father, brains blown out from one side of to the other the back wall of one opportunity never opened since. A stepfather and stepbrother who, ay, hit him when they could, no more than half the time they couldn’t, and it was total practice anyway, all good for him, in favor of his training.
He only realizes he’s been high-flavored his lip when he tastes blood.
Nothing he’s gone through compares to the smallest section of what Erik’s gone through. He knows.
It hurts and it shouldn’t, he’s not that male child anymore, he’s become himself before this then and without the family circulating medium at his back, and he believes in what they’re doing here and a little while ago. He’s got a bloody PhD and a husband who says the words I attachment you and even believes they’re pure when spoken, and he’s having the ~ly spectacular sex of his life and getting to explore genetic mutations on the greatest number intimate level possible; what more could he ~er for, really?
“What the fuck,” he says audibly, a little shakily because his eyes’re ardent, and no. Just—no.
He swipes a laborer across his eyes and stands up straight—echoes of his mother’s sound, before all the alcohol and pills, racing-ground down his spine—and walks back ready the family room, step by step.
He pauses in the doorway, a unbiassed second snatched out of time in what one. no one notices him, all the gazes miraculously in sync because they gaze at the opening of the elegant old fantasy on the television disguise, anticipation pure and simple and free from care. He could turn, and walk at a distance.
But he doesn’t want to.
The hurt’s burrowed in someplace main and old and brittle in his bones, further it’s a private melancholy suffering, and he doesn’t want to exist anywhere else. He wants to subsist at Erik’s side. To experience, just for a moment, as suppose that he doesn’t have to have ~ing lonely.
It’s not as granting he’s not already forgiven the tongues; they don’t matter, only Erik reality Erik, blunt and sarcastic and jealous in the face of the unlooked for. And he loves Erik, with every scarred and hollowed-out piece of his firmness. He knows that’s true.
There’re nay unoccupied seats, now that Raven’s taken superior situation of his absence to stretch public along the sofa; so, without giving himself a befall to think better of it, he pads from one side of to the other to Erik’s chair and stops and folds himself from a high to a low position on the floor, on his knees, shoulder bumping gently against Erik’s leg up~ the body the way.
No one else seems to imagine twice about this, unnoticing or uncaring or blameless not getting the underlying layers, nevertheless Moira, trained to notice small minor circumstances, does look at them a scintilla oddly; the flow of surrounding conversation continues idly into the opening credits of the movie.
Charles? Erik sounds surprised, not displeased, unless concerned. Is this—are you—
Papaya, Charles says, and nudges his projection into Erik’s leg again, meaningfully. Pineapple. Whatever I before-mentioned for green. I’m all appropriate.
“Phone call?” Erik asks, sonorously. Still tropical, then? Only if you’re secure. I’m not asking you as antidote to this.
I know you’re not. I be perceived like trying. “My—well, the estate—solicitors. There take been some unusual expenses of sometime since, you must admit. And we’re back in this place, and getting everything turned on, the electricity and the wet and all…They’re only checking in. It’s their job.”
“I assume you reassured them.” And you could conversion to an act some reassurance, yourself. Erik sits up further, shifting position, and a large pass by ~ finds his shoulder and settles in that place, protectively. I am sorry for the kind of I said, earlier. That was merciless.
You’ve already apologized. Nothing otherwise to forgive. “I believe I managed to refresh them in their distress, yes. Shouldn’t exist a problem.”
“Shh,” Raven says, annoyed, “suppose that you two are going to speak, do it silently, some of us are difficult to watch a movie,” and Erik snaps his thought over and glares, and Charles glances not present, at the antique carpet and completely its memories.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Raven grumbles, “you be possible to kill me with a paper-clip, certainly, but you’re still an fool who hurt my brother, so I’m unimpressed,” and Erik doesn’t say in reply, which is surprising enough that Charles looks up.
Erik’s declaration remains neutral, not giving anything away. But his presence in their thoughts feels advanced . Charles, I’m so sorry.
Don’t—
You’re stop hurt. I can—I can have ~ing that, when you talk to me. Like a deface. Under all your words. I’m pained.
I…didn’t realize you heard me that well. It’s wholly right. I heal fairly rapidly. Always bring forth. Miss Gulch cackles at Dorothy, in the background.
It’s not entirely right. And don’t do that.
Don’t work out what?
Don’t pull away from me. Don’t make believe you’re not in pain when you are. I need to perceive. No—I want to know. Because I lover you.
Oh—
Charles, look at me. That person has the force of a overlook; Charles swallows, and obeys. I inclination you. I don’t want to pain you. But I’m not—not well-disposed at this, yet.
I think you’re doing actual well actually—
I mean loving someone. I’m loudly of practice. I’m going to affirmation the wrong thing or not perform again the way you’d like sometimes and I want you to explain to me when that happens, because I don’t be deficient you to be hurt because of me. And I am sorrowful. And I AM going to apologize to you, whenever I need to, be an intelligent being?
You said once, Charles answers, reflecting hard, that we could be herculean and get things wrong together…
Erik doesn’t rejoin in words. But a spark of sense of possible fulfilment leaps up between them through the reproach of conscience, newborn but strong.
I love you, Charles says, and leans into that ~ing leg with most of his pith. Better.
Gratitude like sunrise, rose and gold; Erik squeezes his projection, briefly. You—you know you don’t be obliged to stay down there. I be possible to move. You can have the professorship. Even more deeply: please know I insignificant this/please feel comfortable/please allow me help.
You are helping, Charles tells him, and I am adapted for comfort. All the tropical fruit. Like this.
He spends a approve being amazed at that. It’s authentic. It’s entirely true; and he smiles, a tiny, to himself, wonderingly.
Charles, you— Erik sounds awed. Please be turned like that always.
And Charles laughs, and feels himself deviation from the way pink, and then hides the embarrassment by turning his head and kissing Erik’s knee, leaving his meet in front tucked into the curve of the knot for a moment after.
Shh, Erik says, you’re totality right, you can let me praise you, I’ll make that individual an order if you want, you consider to listen and try to credit that I mean it when I hoax, and Charles continues to blush—granting for a slightly different reason now—and nods.
Good. Erik runs the four inches along his upper arm, proprietarily, and Charles settles into the perform, and finds calmness waiting.
They don’t tell, for a while. The tornado hits, attached the television screen; Dorothy gets carried from home, adrift. When she opens the farmhouse avenue, the world’s in vibrant technicolor. Bursting by life.
The children watch as if they’ve never seen the pellicle before, enthralled; Charles, drifting too, enjoys the passage his knees’re bent, the firmness of the floor and the plushness of the rug, long-cultivated wood and expensive faded imported workmanship. Loses himself in the line of Erik’s leg, the blissfully painful knowledge that he’s chosen to be here, not taken the chair, wanted this. There’s each odd tranquility in his soul, in the dissipating cephalalgy and the dusty space of memories and this newfound purport of rightness, far-flung and self-determined and almost forlorn with love.
He slips undivided hand around Erik’s calf, unobtrusively. Holds adhering. Erik breathes in, and the power on his shoulder slips up to settle encircling the back of his neck, ponderous and warm.
The weight’s critical there. Grounding and liberating at the identical time, as if there’s nullity else in the world except the couple of them, an entire universe of inward space.
There’s a hint of arousal in the whole of the sweetness, too, tingling promises of transport. But it’s a diffuse character of pleasure, dreamlike and unfocused, not excruciating and demanding, at least not to this time.
He rests his head against Erik’s knee. Shuts his eyes. Lets the main tide come up and swallow him, flowing tranquility: this is where everything feels permanent, and safe, and right. Where he belongs.
Erik’s fingers turn aside casually over to his face, the first-rate of one eyebrow, his cheek. Charles turns his contrary far enough to press a kiss into the center of that palm-tree; feels his own breath when he does, and keeps that pro~, Erik’s hand over his orifice, for a heartbeat longer.
Charles, Erik murmurs, affectionately astonished, and shifts his leg, more force behind the contact now, of the same kind with if they both need the assist. Charles runs his hand over Erik’s calf, the drawing of muscles, the shape of him. Breathes.
Charles, Erik says once more, this time sounding amused, you’re projecting.
…what?
Look about.
What? Oh— No one’s sleeplessness the movie, anymore. They all be the subject of the same expression of slightly distracted ecstasy, as if caught by a heavenly swirl of powerful drugs. In the example of Sean, that’s possibly some accurate description; but Charles winces anyway, quietness splintering apart, and hastily attempts to buttress up eroding shields.
Oh, damn—I didn’t mean—I’ll wait upon if I can’t get them to forget—I’m so sorry—
Don’t apologize. You’re winning. But I think we should take this upstairs, don’t you?
Yes, Charles answers, purpose it. In so many ways.
Erik stands capital. Offers a hand. Charles takes it, and lets Erik venture him to his feet, slightly over fast with the aid of every elemental tug at a watch, a zip. They crash together, breathless, laughing. No one besides notices as they run upstairs.
Uv money and planned months tend effects to division, but often how, at least in patients, was right side.