Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Good news," said Raven, when Erik answered the phone. "There's a very attractive Russian guy who's offered to take me home so you need to come get Charles. He's at the University Club, arse over tits drunk."

"How is that good news?" said Erik.

"Well, it's good news for me," said Raven, before she hung up.

Erik said, "Fuck." He was in his pyjamas, but because Charles would not make it home otherwise, and Erik really did want to see his boyfriend's gorgeous face again, he chucked on the closest pair of jeans and his jacket, grabbed the car keys and left the warm apartment.

In fifteen minutes, he was parking and stomping the short walk to the bar, puffing angry, frosty breaths and muttering about blow jobs that were definitely owed. He nodded to Alex, the bouncer, on the way in, who said, "He's propping up the bar."

That was a ridiculous expression to describe the state of Charles, as it appeared the rumpled professor could barely hold up his own head, let alone an artfully designed bar top. Erik slid into the space beside Charles' barstool and, leaning his elbows on the bar, said, "Hi."

"Hi," said Charles, swinging his head round like it was weighted on one side with concrete. "Mmmm, you must be made up of copper and tellurium, because you are Cu Te."

Erik laughed. "... but I'm taken," Charles told him earnestly, "I have the best boyfriend in the world."

"Oh, I know," said Erik. Charles' eyelids kept dipping down and the effort he was making to keep them up was only succeeding in raising his eyebrows. Damn sexy eyebrows though. Erik sighed. "Look, your amazing boyfriend wants to make sure you get home, so lets get you home now, ok?"

"Oh, that's so sweet," said Charles, sliding off the barstool and sinking to one knee. Erik hauled him up by the elbow, and began the process of half dragging, half carrying his wobbly man out of the bar to the car.

"Thanks for letting me lean on you," Charles slurred in Erik's face. "Raven made me drink to celebrate. Still, it's beyond the call of duty for a driver to have to prop me up, so cheers."

Erik couldn't tell if Charles was playing or was just that shitfaced that he really didn't recognise him. "Don't worry about it, sir," he said, "all part of the service. But feel free to tip me, if you think I've done my job well."

"Of course," said Charles, pulling a scrunched up fifty out of his breast pocket and tucking it in Erik's.

Yep, really that shitfaced.

"You'll probably want to thank your boyfriend in the morning too," said Erik.

"Even better, I'm going to ask him to marry me."

Erik stopped dead still. His brain felt like there were ants in it.

"Wanna see the ring?" Charles asked, fishing a box out of his trouser pocket and attempting to open it. After he had trapped his own finger in the hinged ring box twice, Erik retrieved it and, his own hands feeling like they'd been replaced with tongs, opened it to see a thick, matt gold band.

"It's beautiful," he said, his voice reedy, "that must have taken you ages to save up for."

"Sooooo long. I've been eating god awful PB and J and drinking thermos coffee and walking and other stuff for months and I did it. Saved up, didn't use trust fund money 'cos Erik calls it blood money, worth it, though, so worth it." Charles gazed at Erik seriously, if somewhat blindly, "He's the best man in all of time and space. I love him more than anything. He's smart and sexy and, oh my god, he has the biggest cock I've ever seen. Probably the biggest in Manhattan. Definitely the biggest in Oxford, not that I saw all the cocks in Oxford, just a substantial sample."

Erik winced, not sure he needed reminding that Charles could have anyone he wanted. It was a mystery why he was settling for Erik.

With the mercurial dexterity of a truly drunk temperament, Charles became morose. "Fuck, I hope he says yes."

"I'm pretty sure he's going to say yes."

Erik wished he was confident enough to reply tomorrow with, 'I would never say anything except yes, because you are the only thing in my life that is a gift, undeserved, and not something I strive for. You make me excited to open my eyes in the morning. I will never get enough of you.' But he knew, when the time came, he would merely say yes and that would be momentous enough.

He bundled Charles into the passenger seat and drove home cautiously, aware of each snoring breath, of each unconscious twitch from his lovable, drunk man, who was collapsed and drooling on the car window.

When he lifted Charles out of the car into his arms like a baby, Charles' eyes popped open. His smile, when he saw Erik, was adoring. "Erik, when did you get here? Super, I'll get sex now."

"There is no way you're getting sex now."

"Balls," said Charles, genuinely puzzled and disappointed. "Shit, that cabbie didn't tell you I'm going to propose, did he?"

"No Charles, I will be wonderfully surprised."

"Oh good," he said, eyes slipping shut again.

Erik carried Charles into the elevator, into the apartment and tucked him into bed, leaving water and enormously strong painkillers on the bed side table. Then he went into the lounge to telephone his mom, keen to tell her the good news.

Chapter Text

“Why on earth would we want to do that, Charles? You’re going senile old man,” Erik said, in response to Charles’ proposal.

“Not so much of the old, thank you. Especially when you’re years older than me.” Charles let go of Erik’s hand and smoothed his palm over his barren scalp. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps the children were right. They did seem rather against the idea.”

“They what...?” said Erik, eyes bulging. “How dare they presume...?” He picked up Charles’ hand, placed it on his own knee and patted it. “What did they say?”

“Well,” said Charles, “Pietro thought it was a shoddy political manoeuvre, a last ditch effort, he called it...”

“Oh, I would never use my love for you to further my political standing, or further gay and mutant rights awareness, or make a point. He has that wrong.”

“And Wanda covered her ears and said, Oh God, you’re not having sex with my father are you? and mimed vomiting.”

“I certainly am having sex with you, as often as possible. You’re still as sexy a minx as you were in the 60’s and I can still get that gorgeous sound out of you, the one you make when you’re really turned on.” His voice dropped lower, “...and get you to whimper my name.”

“Stop it,” said Charles. His ears went pink, but his hand slid higher up Erik’s thigh.

“What did David say?”

“Oh well, David,” said Charles, huffing, “seems to think you’re after his inheritance, that you want my money for gay and mutant causes and a holiday home in Tahiti.”

“I do not love your money, Charles, I love you. I’ve never asked for a cent. How can David not know that?”

“I actually do want a holiday home in Tahiti,” said Charles, wistfully. “It’s like he read my mind... oh, wait...”

“And my little Lorna?”

“Lorna pointed out we’ve both been married and had families, and that marriage was for two people who were committed to heading in the same direction and that we were hardly heading in the same direction unless that direction was the grave.”

“I am not going to give up living while I’m waiting for death.” Erik’s voice had gotten quite loud. Charles winced. “No one can tell me not to marry you. You’re my friend and my lover. How dare they?”

“Erik, it’s ok, calm down. I just want to spend the rest of my life with you; I don’t care about the marriage part.” Charles kissed him, slipped a hand inside Erik’s jacket and curved it around his ribs, fingers sliding into the recesses between each bone. Charles didn’t have recesses anymore, but Erik was still as slim as the day Charles had pulled him out of the sea.

“We are getting married, Charles,” Erik declared, forcing Charles’ head back so he could nuzzle under his chin. “I’m going to show the whole world how much I value what we have.”

Charles’ hand gripped Erik in pulses, timed in tandem with his breathy gasps as Erik found spot after spot, each of them arousing the most delicious tingles and threatening to elicit the aforementioned whimper. “Oh God, Erik, love, what ever you want. Just keep doing that.”

Erik’s voice sunk into a growl. It was punctuated with Charles’ gorgeous little sounds. “I’ll keep doing that, for the rest of our lives, I’ll keep doing that. We will chase down life, Charles, and we’ll do it as happily married people, bound to each other, husband and husband.”

“If you insist,” said Charles, and since Erik was busy, he allowed himself a satisfied little smirk.

Chapter Text

Erik was listening avidly, while trying not to look as if he was listening avidly. His father had just come back from a command audience with the King, and was telling his family all that had occurred. The whole country revered the King, who was young and fair and kind; Erik loved him, but only Erik and his sad, weeping heart knew it.

“This is great news for us, and great news for the country,” his father was saying, “I have been commissioned with a new crown and... a set of engagement jewellery. If I do a good job, I may be asked to make the wedding jewels and the coronation jewels.”

Erik’s mother said, “The country will be overjoyed that the King has chosen a bride. No one deserves love more than our King.”

“But, we cannot tell anyone until the King reveals the news himself. Edie? Understand? Erik? You too. No letting this slip from our house.”

Edie placed her fingers over her mouth and waved her other hand to indicate there was nothing to fear from her. Erik shrugged and looked disinterested, sullenly slouching over the kitchen table.

“Can I go Papa? You won’t need me for the sketching part of the design.”

Jakob sighed. “Yes, my son.”

Erik heard his mother say, “He’s just not interested in anything.” He didn’t stop; he stumbled from the room, down the stairs, through the shop and into the street. He ran until he left the streets behind, and then the fields, until he burst through the woods to the edge of the lake, sinking despairingly against their tree. There, Erik sat pale and still as his heart broke and a few unwelcome tears sprung out, but he was hidden and no one could see he wasn’t behaving properly. Then, he angrily rubbed at his eyes and punched the ground.

‘Stupid Erik. Of course, the beautiful, clever King doesn’t love you. Of course, he has to marry and you have to smile and say how pleased you are. It means nothing that he has lent you books and taught you to fence and smiled at you so your mouth watered and your breath stuttered in your throat. Even if he has asked your opinion and rested his ankle against yours when you’re playing chess, he is the King and you are the son of a smith.’

Erik curled his fingers into the swilling shallows of the lake. He had been drowning, and Charles saved him, jumped in and hauled him out. When Erik had finally stopped coughing up lake water and had swiped the runnels away from his eyes, he saw the King, dripping, shirt and hair sticking down in patches, but still wearing dignity and authority about him, unshakable, unable to be abandoned on the lake shore with his crown and doublet. Erik had immediately bowed and quavered, “Your Majesty, thank you.”

The King had inquired, “What’s your name? I think you should come to my place and get dry.”

“Your place?” said Erik, sardonically, mouth faster than his brain, “Do you mean the palace, or my house, or this tree, or anywhere else in the country that all belongs to you?” Then he stopped speaking and was horrified, until Charles let out whips of laughter, which beat Erik’s habitual pessimism into a hopeful pleasure.

“Oh, come on,” said the King. “You don’t have to, you know, it’s not an order.” The fact that an order could be given was implicit. “It’ll be fun,” added the young King.

Erik raised his eyebrows in disbelief, provoking more of Charles’ arresting laughter. “Well, not the getting dry part,” conceded the King, “but we’ll find something fun to do after that. Do you play chess?”

So the soggy sovereign and the smith’s son mounted Charles‘ horse and rode to the palace, where Charles found Erik dry clothing by forcing a tall councillor to lend him some, and then showed Erik his suite of rooms, including his personal drawing room and his study space. Erik gravitated towards the swords, displayed around the rooms on the walls, fingertips traveling greedily and knowledgeably over the fuller of the blades and the intricately worked pommels and cross guards.

When he looked around, Charles was watching, eyebrows raised, but the gentle smile was encouraging and into the silence tumbled Erik’s voice. He talked about sword smithing and every Samurai legend he’d ever been told by his cousin, the ones about folding metal over and over and forming a sword that could cut silk in the air. He talked about how metals, once you knew them, always behaved how they could be expected to behave, unlike people.

Charles was radiant with interest. “Are you a good swordsman then, Erik?”

“No, your Majesty,” admitted Erik, “I know the components of a sword, not the handling of one.”

Charles lifted a sword off its holder, threw it to Erik and chose one for himself. “I’ll teach you, in exchange for what you just taught me.”

He sent Erik home hours later, with a borrowed book, a full stomach, and some sore muscles from learning to fence.

“Thank you, your Majesty,” said Erik, taking his leave and the book, “but don’t I owe you? You saved my life. I have no idea how to repay you.”

“Well then,” said the King, twinkling and decisive, “you’ll have to visit me next week also.”

“If it will please you, your Majesty.”

“It will,” said Charles.

After a year of visits and lake side meetings, Erik had triumphed over Charles at chess thrice, and read his way through the King’s personal library so that Charles had started bringing him books from the country’s University, and Erik was showing phenomenal skill with a sword, although Charles’ drawing room had some blade shaped gouges in the walls and furniture, and Charles had once taken Erik’s advice on policy, although only the King and the smith’s son knew that, and Charles had kissed Erik, who had melted against the King in relief and desire and devotion.

“You didn’t let me do that because I pulled you out of the lake, did you? Because you don’t owe me anything and certainly not that.”

“No, your Majesty, I let you because I adore you. I’d have let you if you hadn’t saved me and, if you weren’t the King, I’d have done it first, months ago. I’d have done it because you’re surprising and handsome and intelligent, and you make me feel surprising and handsome and intelligent.”

“Oh,” said the boy who was a King, looking pink and pleased. “You’re never that verbose unless you’re talking about metal.”

“Metal and you, your Majesty.”

“Oh,” said Charles again and gathered Erik up for another kiss.

And then the King commissioned the engagement set and Erik spent the week in anguish, helping his father set pale aquamarines and garnets into the new crown and bending metals into a cuff and links for a neck chain.

The morning of the day Erik was due to meet Charles, the King himself came to the shop. The smith and his wife bowed and presented Jakob and Erik’s hard work on velvet trays. Erik hovered at the doorway, scowling and peeking around the frame.

“They’re exquisite,” Charles said, his hand hovering over the links of pale gold and silver which made up the chain to support a softly tinted aquamarine the size of a thumb print. “They will match those eyes perfectly.” He said it reverently and an aching little sob snuck out of Erik despite the determined effort with which he had locked his jaw. The King looked up and saw him. Erik wanted to duck behind the doorframe but he had been caught so he stood still and let Charles see the mess he was.

Charles looked as if it were he who had been caught; looked shocked, concerned and wondering.

“Is this your son, Mr Lehnsherr?” he asked.

“Yes, your Majesty. Erik, come and pay proper respect to your sovereign.

“I apologise, your Majesty,” Jakob said, as Erik knelt before Charles, “He has not... been himself this last week.”

“I imagine so,” said the King, reaching out his hand to stroke through Erik’s hair and using strong square fingers to lift the clenched shut jaw.

“Erik,” he commanded, then waited until Erik acknowledged him with drowning eyes. “I had this beautifully planned, Erik, but I can’t delay for aesthetics when you are so upset.”

He placed the crown on Erik’s head and said, “I was right. It looks sublime with those eyes.

“Erik, whose family name, I’ve only just learned, is Lehnsherr, will you marry me? I want you with me in the palace when we are at peace and by my side in battle when we are at war. Will you keep me company and help me rule? I trust you with my body and my country and my heart. I love you. You should stand up now; you don’t have to kneel for me again.”

Erik stood and Charles smirked, which Erik correctly interpreted to mean, ‘... except for later, in private.’

There was a clatter of protest around them. The Man at Arms was making horrified huffs and the Councillor, who’d come to settle the payment, was stammering about alliances with neighbours and class divisions. But Edie Lehnsherr tugged on her husband’s sleeve and said, “Jakob, look at our son.”

Erik was standing with his shoulders back and smiling. There were crinkles around his eyes and nose that Edie hadn’t seen since he was a boy. It was as if all the candles in town were being held out before his face and even the councillor fell silent in the shadow of the brilliance of Erik’s happiness.

“Yes?” asked Charles, holding a hand out.

“Yes,” agreed Erik.

Charles kissed him and started dressing him in the neck chain and cuff. “Did you help make your own engagement jewellery, then?”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“Superb. They’re superb. You’re superb. You are precious beyond measure, my love.” He signaled the Man at Arms, who disappeared out the door. “I can, at least, surprise you with one of your engagement presents,” Charles said, taking a long package from the returning Man at Arms and handing it to Erik, who unwrapped the cloth from it to discover his very own sword.

“My cousin made this,” said Erik, recognising the work immediately.

“Yes, I suppose he did,” said Charles, “the Lehnsherrs in the next kingdom.”

“Thank you, Charles.”

Charles smiled, then turned to Erik’s parents, “With your permission, I’d like to take Erik to the palace now, so he’ll be under the protection of the Men at Arms. I promise he will have his own separate suites.”

They nodded, stunned.

“Now, I don’t think I can manage to carry you to the horse, my love,” said the King, “you might have to use your own two feet.”

Erik laughed and everyone, except Charles, startled to see a beguiling creature magically replacing the dour boy that was there minutes before. The Man at Arms was aware, unaccountably, that he’d follow this man without question.

Erik said goodbye to his mother and father, holding the King’s hand to leave his home. On the ride home, he was bare back behind the saddle, with his arms wrapped around Charles as tightly as he could despite the edge of leather separating them.
“Charles,” he asked, when it was clear they were out of his parent’s earshot, “you’re not really going to make me stay in separate suites, are you? Because, I’d like to point out, that the succession can’t be impacted by my being a virgin, or not, on our wedding night.”

Charles, already attempting a complicated thing with one hand handling the reins and the other angled behind himself to sneak up Erik’s shirt, managed to turn in the saddle and kiss him while not riding into a ditch.

“That is impeccable reasoning, my love,” he said, “and further evidence that I chose the very best possible person to marry.”

Chapter Text

Charles was waiting for Erik when he got home from work.

“Hello darling,” he said, “how was your day?”

“Pretty good,” said Erik, starting to shrug out of his coat. He was really looking forward to a cuddle on the couch and his feet up.

“Oh, don’t, might as well keep that on. The washing machine is broken and the techie can’t come until tomorrow, so we have to go to the laundromat.”

“Really? Perhaps I’d better take a look.”

“No, I had Dr McCoy from next door look it over and he spoke to the repairman so the correct part would be ordered.” Charles spread his hand over Erik’s pec. “It’ll be fun, we’ll take the small chess set and buy kebabs for dinner.”

Erik’s near perpetual sternness broke up, clouds after a storm, as he regarded the bouncy man in front of him, felt himself becoming buoyed up on his endless enthusiasm. Charles could make anything fun; he made Erik fun, which took skills and was partly why Erik loved him. “Ok,” he agreed, “did you already bag up the laundry?”

“Yes, and I raided the change bowl for coins.”

Erik drove. He backed out of the driveway and, then, paused to belt up. “Where on earth am I going? This neighbourhood doesn’t need a laundromat. How far will I need to drive?”

Charles laughed, as Erik steered the car down the tree lined streets, past tidy yards and waving neighbours. “Yes, it’s a marked difference from the state of us when we met, isn’t it? There’s a Wash ‘n’ Dry on campus.”

Erik reached across the centre console and clasped Charles’ hand. They were both recalling their first meeting.

“We met in a laundromat,” Erik said. They’d both been post graduate students. “You were just shoving piles of your clothing and towels all into the same machine.”

Charles was laughing, “You were horrified, but thank goodness you stepped in and pointed out those red boxers, ‘cause I had a lab coat in there and it was the only one I had that was still white ‘cause my other one had bilirubin all over it.”

“We talked,” reminisced Erik.

“Well, you say talk, but you primarily lectured me on proper sorting techniques and line drying.”

“... and you just badgered me with loaded questions in an outright attempt to figure out my sexual orientation,” countered Erik. “I wasn’t very surprised to see you there the next week, and the next week.”

“Previous to that, l used to wait until all my clothes were dirty, and then do everything all at once, wandering down the pub and leaving it unattended. Suddenly, to ‘run into you’ regularly, I was washing my clothes once a week and my wardrobe never looked better.”

“You used to bring your travel chess set.”

Charles said, “Then you were brave enough to put your arm around me.” They’d been leaning side by side against the folding bench, and Charles had relaxed against Erik’s shoulder, beamed up at him and said, “I really like you.”

Erik grinned at Charles. “You invited me to watch you play baseball.”

“Which you did. And you brought me tea in a thermos, and a copy of Siddhartha.”

Erik’s voice softened to a reverent hum, “You kissed me.”

“Yeah,” said Charles, gleefully, “I did that.”

They pulled up near the laundromat, and transferred the bags into the building. It was reasonably quiet, luckily, because even a busy laundromat wouldn’t stop Erik from taking up three or four different machines, for the good of the fabrics.

A decade into their relationship, Charles knew never to stray from Erik’s laundry rules. Erik fell to pretreating the whites, while Charles got a load of colours and a load of linen washing. Then, Charles volunteered to buy dinner from the next block of shops, while Erik set up the chess pieces.

Charles had been right. It was fun. Erik tucked one leg up and slouched. He’d never do that in his upright daily life. And, he was winning; Charles was playing terribly.

When the first machine beeped, Charles leapt up and started to empty it. Erik insisted each item was thoroughly checked, before it was dried, preventing leftover stains from setting, and sorted into dryer and line dry lots, so delicate items didn’t lose shape.

While Charles was still dealing with the giant squid-like fitted sheet, the colours cycle completed and Erik got up to take care of it.

The clothing was coming out really well, the laundromat machines were more powerful than their domestic one, and Erik was enjoying the fresh smell of the washing powder he’d chosen. The aroma brought up a very appealing memory for him, of a time when all of Charles’ clothes had begun to smell like Erik’s brand of powder and a visceral sense of possessiveness came over him. There had been several instances of almost fully clothed sex in the first month of moving in together, Erik’s nose buried helplessly in Charles’ collar, as he moved against him thinking, mine, mine, mine.

Erik smiled, pulling out a blue shirt then a grey sock. He dipped his hand in and pulled out the next item.

“Oh Charles,” he said, with more dismay than accusation, “you’ve left a white in with the colours.”

It was a T-shirt, splotchy with pink, and worse, it seemed to have marks still on it. Erik spread it out to investigate the stain, and read, Erik, please marry me. It was written with a sharpie in Charles’ fluid hand.

He looked at Charles, who was watching him, leaning against the washer, and smiling. His expression was a stunning mix of hope, fondness and nerves.

Erik spent a minute in dizzying disbelief, thinking, ‘Oh my, this is really happening’, then a cautious hope grew, along with the dawning possibility that he might really get to keep the intoxicating man leaning on the washer. He wondered if this was what overwhelmingly happy felt like, not being able to breathe and his cheeks intent on leaving his face.

But, the words that stumbled out of his mouth were, “Our washing machine isn’t really broken, is it?”

Charles’ laughter rang out of him in throaty peels. He strode to Erik and pulled him roughly, arms pressing him in closely at the waist. Erik’s hands automatically slipped up to Charles’ shoulders.

“Darling,” said Charles, “Please say yes. I simply can’t do life without you.”

“How could you possibly think I could say no? Yes, absolutely, whenever, where ever, Charles. I love you.”

Charles kissed him, and the students in the laundromat clapped and cheered, “Way to go Professor X.”

Looking justifiably pleased with himself, Charles bagged the remainder of the laundry and drove them home, where Erik insisted on drying the T-shirt and making Charles wear it to bed.

Chapter Text

For Charles, certainty came the day he had to kill a bride. It was seeing the tangled remains of the white dress, the symbol of her innocence and new beginnings, hope and a clean slate. It was seeing the tangled remains of her face, deteriorating inexorably like the promise they had once had in their future.

He took her head clean off. He always tried to do that, if he could, because his machete wasn’t very sharp and often stuck in bone otherwise. He felt like he’d chopped the rope securing the last lifeboat to their sinking ship. He felt like he had chopped himself down.

As he and Erik sliced their way through the rest of the herd of zombies, Charles tiredly sang to himself, White lace and promises, a kiss for luck and we’re on our way, we’ve only begun.

He would be that woman one day. That was where everyone was headed. Erik and he had lost so many people and it was a dead end battle. They’d only lasted this long because Erik could take out so many zombies at once by flinging shards of metal like shrapnel or decapitating them with their own necklaces. More than once, Erik had simply crushed a group of them by bringing a building down on top of their heads.

Charles was almost useless against them. Brain dead equaled no read. He had to keep watch the old fashioned way, swing a machete manually, take them down one by one.

Charles became useful if they ran into other live people. He knew who to trust, who to avoid and who to divert. He could read what they really had to trade. He once planted a suggestion in a man’s head and that man wanted nothing more than for Erik have his boots. Apparently, morals were liquid when it came to getting Erik what he needed.

He could also read the stinging buzz that meant a brain was turning, that the start of death was present.

When confronted with the walking dead, Charles was playing blind. His rich internal world was dying, great bites being taken from it. Every person turned was a note silenced, in the intricate orchestral movement that used to be his theme song; his to play with, his identity, his value. Soon it would be a lonely, tinny keyboard warbling out a wheezing drawn out drift into nothing. Charles was becoming nothing. He hadn’t realized he’d thought he was so superior, until he was no longer distinctly different from any other sentient being, afraid of being without sentience.

Later, barricaded into an abandoned and ransacked house, he took first watch, but spent much of the time watching Erik, watching the gentle rise and fall of Erik’s chest, which some how managed to be broad and meager at once. Charles viciously wanted to protect him, but was mortifyingly aware that, with out Erik’s protection, he would have been bitten months ago. His pre apocalypse lifestyle had been mental and sedentary, not preparing him at all for the scratch and scrape life they now had. Worse, he’d taken Erik for granted in their old life; broken dinner dates when experiments needed finishing, reveled in being the man of status in the relationship, assumed he was needed and that Erik would always be around. Remorsefully, Charles reflected, it had taken the eradication of humanity and mutant kind to realize the gift he had in Erik.

Erik woke with a snort, immediately seeking Charles out in the gloom. His head swung to the south briefly, then he looked back to Charles and smiled softly. “I think there’s a herd about ten miles south, but they’re not coming this way. There are random little bits of metal all moving in the same direction but in a shambling way, slow and in no way cohesive.” He paused and looked at Charles more closely. “Are you ok, Schatz?”

Charles said, “I’ve been thinking about Maslow.”

Erik gave a bark of confused laughter. “Maslow? You’ve been wondering if zombies got enough brains, they could maybe work on becoming self actualized?”

“Very funny. I’ve been thinking the rest of my life, however long, cannot be just survival or I’m already one of them.”

“C’mere Schatz,” said Erik, pulling Charles in like a fisherman with a net. “It is about survival right now, it has to be. Until we get to your house in Westchester, and secure it, we have nothing on the safety tier. What is it you want, Charles? When we get security? We already have belonging and...”

“I want that... to belong to each other. I want whatever this apocalyptic version of life will give us that is equivalent to being married to you.”

“Good, me too.” Erik kissed him hard, as if every stroke of his tongue would paint hope thickly over Charles’ doubt. His voice was wobbly and gruff, “We’ll just have to do the love, honor and cherish part.”

Charles was coming apart under Erik’s hands, under the torrent of passion and dedication Erik’s lips were insisting on him. When Erik pushed up his shirt and pressed his mouth to each naked inch, Charles wished Erik could consume him, that they could exist in each other. Charles’ control was dissipating as rapidly as Erik was dispersing his clothing, and Charles reached out with his mind and found the most solid thought Erik had, and clung. It was, ‘Perfect, Charles perfect, me and Charles perfect.’

“And, Charles,” Erik growled, in his ear, “you’re not just one of them, ‘You are like nobody since I love you.’ ”

“Oh, that’s lovely.”

“It’s Pablo Neruda. ‘You are more than this white head that I hold tightly... every day, between my hands.’ ”

“That’s what I’m talking about. Quoting poetry during a crisis of life and death. Erik, I do not deserve you. I wish to God I’d married you when I had the chance.”

Erik’s response was to grind against Charles’ cock and lick down his sternum. Charles started to shake.

“From now on though,’ he promised, “I’m yours, and my mission is to make you happy.”

“Is it, Charles?”

“Yes, I will reach my potential by ensuring you achieve happiness.”

“Great, then I suggest you take off your pants. That would make me very happy.” He began to unlace Charles‘ shoes. “Screw Maslow, I’m with Burroughs. ‘Happiness is a by-product of function, purpose and conflict.’ And you,” Erik added, while exposing Charles’ cock and kissing it like it was the foot of a god, “my very erect man, are functioning.”

And that, is when Charles felt hope, and certainty.

Chapter Text

“Charles,” yelled Erik, “what’s the new metal in your apartment?”

There was no answer. Erik placed his satchel, and the beer he’d brought, on the hallway table.

“Charles?”

The mystery metal was in Charles’ bedroom near Charles’ watch. Swallowing against a suddenly dry mouth, Erik shucked off his shoes and shed his coat on the way. Historically, the presence of new metal in Charles’ bedroom meant clothes were surplus.

The first time Erik had entered Charles’ place, using his newly cut key, he called out, “Charles, there’s new metal in your apartment!” He hadn’t meant a fresh roll of foil wrap or staples, he’d meant substantial, interesting metal. He’d followed the call of silver and stainless steel to the bedroom and found Charles, fingers of one hand up his own arse and twirling a cock ring round his others. Erik proceeded to have a great deal of fun with both rings.

The second time Erik felt the pull of new metal in Charles’ bedroom, he discovered Charles, cuffed and naked, stretched out on display like the delectable feast he turned out to be.

Another time Erik arrived at Charles’ apartment, calling, “Charles, what’s that new bit of titanium?” Charles met him in the hallway and shoved a studded tongue down Erik’s throat.

“That’s where you’ve really been for a fortnight,” said Erik, as Charles dropped to his knees, whipped the pants off the master of magnetism, and proceeded to tease a gut wrenching orgasm out of Erik with his mouth and newly acquired toy.

“That,” said Erik afterwards, panting and sagging against the hallway table, “is both my favourite introduction to new metal at your place and my favourite use for titanium.”

With such examples in his memory, Erik hopped down the hallway, peeling off his socks and anticipating something delicious and filthy. He unbuttoned his shirt, while using his power to unbuckle his belt and fling open the bedroom door.

Charles was sitting on the edge of the bed, fully clothed. Erik modestly, and hastily, tugged his shirt closed. Charles had a brilliant, if slightly hesitant, smile on his face and Erik could both see and feel the ring nestled in his palm. It was gold, humming to Erik, soft and warm, like Charles’ mental caresses.

“Take it, if you want it,” said Charles, unfurling his fingers, “it’s for you because I want you in all the ways I can have you. I want you in bed when you’re fucking me and I want you in bed when you’re snoring. I want you when you argue with me and when you beat me at chess and when you fall asleep watching movies and when you melt your cell phone because the Government has pissed you off. I want you to come home to me, like this, every night. I want you to be mine; legally and before your God and mine, and before our families and our friends. I want you to marry me because I want you for all the days and nights of our lives.”

Erik called the gold band to him, floating it from Charles’ open hand directly onto his own left ring finger. He held his hand up and admired the ring, as it hugged him, then said, “Now, this is my favourite new metal discovery in your... in our house.” He straddled Charles and bent to kiss him. “My unbeatable favourite. You’ll never top this.”

Charles shrugged, sheepish. “I don’t need to try to surprise you with metal treasure hunts anymore. The others were all decoys in the long game I’ve been playing. It was my attempt to divert you, so you wouldn’t read the ring from blocks away and guess what I was up to before you even got to the building.”

“That would mean, that you’ve been planning this for... ” he ticked off on his fingers, pausing to smile at his ring, “... over a year?”

Charles cupped Erik’s face. “I’ve known since we met that I wanted you for forever. I just waited until you showed sufficient interest, upping my chances of getting a yes.”

Erik kissed him again, “Charles, you were always going to get a yes. I haven’t really been able to say no to you for anything, have I?”

“Marry me, then?”

“Yes,” said Erik.

“Kiss me again, then?”

“Yes,” said Erik, and did.

After a delirious kiss interlude, Erik said, quite seriously, “Now that you’ve got me though, you’re still going to keep the tongue stud, right?”

Chapter Text

Charles tugs at the arse of his trousers. Often, he wears jeans so tight they could be laminated on, but the tux pants are rubbing, and not in a good way.

“How do I look?” he asks Raven, who is swathed in a blue rippling dress and circling him in the weightless, fluid, ballerina movement she always uses.

“Like a man going to la guillotine,” she concludes, “but the tux is sexy.”

“He’s going to say no. He hates my career, which is going currently nowhere anyway.”

“You play to the same size crowd he does.”

“Yes, and they are all off their faces, and haven’t noticed I’m playing regurgitated tunes,” says Charles. He tears at his hair, growling. This merely makes his hair look sexier.

“I sometimes wish I’d never brought him to the club to watch you spin your stupid vinyl,” she says, observing the absurd height of one clump of his hair.

Charles hooks his arm around her neck; she shrugs him off and adjusts her cleavage.

“God, imagine if you didn’t bring him that night, if the only meeting we’d ever had was the one where he conducted your first solo.”

“You mean, the one when you told him off for not interpreting that one note as a fermata and making the whole orchestra hold so I could show off my arabesque for longer? That meeting?”

“Um, yeah, that one.”

Raven rolls her eyes. “Idiots,” she says, just loudly enough to hear.

Charles and Raven take their seats, as close to where Erik is conducting as Charles could manage. There is a fantastic view of Erik’s bum from these seats.

When Erik conducts, his limbs are stiff and his movements are staccato and exact, as if he is gathering the music to him, hunching greedily over it while he bends it to his will. When he is in bed with Charles, his body is molten, his motion slick like glissando, and he is an open channel that gives and gives, flooding Charles with vibrations, like a struck tuning fork.

He is faultless. The music is crisp, it crackles around the hall, pulsing into each person.

For the next piece, Che gelida manina from La Boheme, Erik introduces the tenor, Einion Rhys, who graciously bows and sweeps his gaze over the balcony. The applause is dying off, an expectant quiet descends, and Erik raises his baton. Charles clears his throat and moves from his seat. As the opening bars roll over the hall, the tenor steps aside, shaking Charles’ hand and leaving him in the spotlight. Charles takes a diaphragm stretching tug of air and sings.

It’s a measure of Erik’s professionalism, that his baton dips only fractionally when he recognises Charles; and, also, of that of the orchestra, who ignore the little lapse altogether and, later in the aria, Erik’s obvious inhale when Charles hits high C. They are playing as they rehearsed, as Erik would expect.

Charles, after the first terrifying notes, is infused with relief. He becomes emotionally connected to his audience, to Erik, to himself. He is singing with his whole heart, with all of who he is, with all of what makes up Charles in that moment. It’s been a long time since Charles opened himself up for anyone to see, let alone an audience of four hundred people; a very long time since he tried this valiantly, a long time since he hasn’t just brushed over his fear and ennui with swagger. It goes beyond telling a tale, or bringing a bunch of people up or down with an arrangement of notes. It definitely goes beyond punching the air behind his decks and winking at the eyefuls he could score after the set.

This is truthful.

He has no room left for the scratchy tux, his last disastrous album or his bleary eyed past; the empty space of him is filled with the music he is wringing from the core of himself and the minute attention he is paying to Erik’s instruction. Charles is riding on a swell, the sum of the noise produced by seventy nine musicians and their ninety three assorted instruments. The elation is almost worth the rejection if Erik were to say no. He hasn’t felt this transported by music for years.

When his last note fades out, the audience responds enthusiastically. Charles is no Pavarotti, everyone heard the strain in his C, but the crowd has heard him give his soul and appreciates it.

Charles, though, is looking at Erik, at the single tear which is catching light and carrying it over the curve of his cheek.

Charles strides over to Erik’s podium, kneels and holds up a ring, holds it up with his nervous hope and his absolute resolve. He says, under the umbrella of the applause, “Erik Lehnsherr, will you marry me?”

The audience has hushed; the orchestra is all leaning forward. Erik is flushing and breathing hard. He lays his baton on the stand, very carefully, blinks, then nods his head. “Yes,” he says, and a nose kinking smile lifts his face and alters Charles’ opinion of his own life, entirely.

Charles surges up to kiss him, swiping an ardent tongue into Erik’s mouth as if to seal in the yes. He is shaking and can’t get the ring on. The orchestra bursts into Mendelssohn’s wedding march; consummate professionals every last one of them, would probably play while going down with a ship.

Charles can hear a melody, not the orchestral creation; an actual, original story in musical notes is sparkling through his head.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he tells Erik, kisses him quickly again and returns to his seat. Borrowing a pen and a receipt out of Raven’s purse, he writes down the first song he’s written for years, scrawls ERIK in capital letters at the top of the paper.

When Erik finishes accepting applause, watching Charles in obvious adoration throughout, they walk towards each other and stand, arms around waists and foreheads together, as the crowd eddies around them.

“I am a poet,” Erik quotes, from the aria, “What do I do? I write. And how do I live? I live. In my carefree poverty, I squander rhymes and love songs like a lord. When it comes to dreams and visions and castles in the air, I’ve the soul of a millionaire.”

“Apt, isn’t it,” chuckles Charles.

“I don’t have any right to tell you how to live,” Erik says, pink.

“Well, you kind of do now,” points out Charles.

“Not to the degree I was trying to before.”

“I wrote a song,” says Charles, and hums the melody. “It’s called Erik.”

The song subject kisses the composer and keeps on doing so until Raven hauls them apart.

“That’s enough,” she says, hugging them, “let us all have a chance to congratulate you.”

Erik and Charles stand together and receive their good wishes, Charles clutching Erik’s hand, tracing the ring on his fiance’s finger and singing to himself.

Chapter Text

“Oh my God,” groans Charles, rolling over onto his back, his bare flanks revealed in muted red flashes from the light of Erik’s lightsaber lamp.

Erik licks his lips.

“I’ve just had an epiphany,” Charles declares. He sits up on the carpet, one knee tucked up and an arm, a delicious topography of lickable valleys and bitable ridges, slung around it.

“What’s that?” asks Erik, giving into temptation and crawling on hands and knees to collapse, head in Charles’ lap. Charles absently strokes the top ledge of his ear and Erik attempts not to drool. He turns his head and noses at Charles’ belly, closing his eyes against the way his eyesight is starting to shudder. He’s not sure it was such a brilliant idea to shut themselves in his room and get wasted.

The rest of Erik feels amazing, like he’s made of oozing caramel and he knows, undeniably, he’s everyone’s favourite flavour, but his ability to visually focus is compromised. He can see each bronze freckle detailing Charles’ vanilla skin and only impressions of the unmade futon and the bookshelves made from two-by-fours stacked on concrete blocks. Stuff keeps misplacing itself in his line of sight.

Charles sniffs and clutches Erik’s head. “Wait, listen. My epiphany,” he protests, the hand in Erik’s hair is a contradiction, encouraging not dismissive.

“No, I’m having an epiphany,” says Erik. He catches Charles hand and nibbles and slurps his way up the inside of Charles’ arm, wrist to bicep. “Your body gets better and better every fucking day. And, you taste like lemon icing.”

“I don’t think it’s actually possible for my skin to taste like icing, given the salt content in sweat,” Charles says, ponderously, “and, also, I think you’re misusing the word epiphany. But, yes, you met me when I was a pale and scrawny seventeen year old, so I’m not surprised you like me better now.”

Erik rises to loom above Charles. He lays his large hands possessively around a shoulder and a hip.

“I wanted you so much then,” he growls, “when we met. You were so beautiful, so fucking beautiful, and if we hadn’t been in Israel, where you could legally consent, I’d have risked jail.”

“Fuck, you talk a lot when you’re stoned.”

Erik stops talking and starts kissing. He presses his tongue into Charles in fat, greedy strokes. All of the nerve points in his skin are going off like popping candy. There is a desperation which clogs his throat. He experiences it no other time than now, than right at this point of ignition, with Charles in reach and not yet melded to him. It is only with Charles. Only Charles makes him sob for a conclusion, ache over separation, and it’s Charles he chases, always chasing.

For anything else in life, Erik lets things and people come to him; he’s the magnet and, if it doesn’t just fly right into his hand, it wasn’t worth it. He’s like that with money, and marks at University, and friends, and possessions. Yet, this ridiculous puppy, he followed across a continent and an ocean.

He’s an addict.

‘Just one more taste and I’ll be over it,’ Erik promises himself, tasting an earlobe. He has one of Charles’ knees bent over his arm, their groins sliding together. It’s a complete mystery why they are still wearing pants.

“One more,” says Erik into Charles’ hair, as he hooks his thumbs into Charles’ waistband.

“My epiphany,” Charles insists, lifting his arse up to aid Erik’s extraction of it from the pants.

“Hmmm,” contributes Erik, disposing of his own jeans and boxers.

“We should get married,” says Charles, weaving his fingers into the short tufts of Erik’s hair.

“What?” squeaks Erik, trying very hard to concentrate on Charles’ face and not his mouth-fucking-watering, creamy white, newly exposed cock.

“Married,” repeats Charles, just before all his attention switches to wriggling worm-like under Erik, until Erik is frantic with want and can see no way out but to pin Charles’ wrists above his head, clasp their cocks together and dive headfirst into his downfall.

Panting into Charles’ neck afterward, Erik thinks, ‘I’m done. That’s enough, surely. I can walk away.’

And Charles stretches, vixenish, against him and rumbles, “Dear God, you’re magnificent.” He gazes at Erik, who doesn’t even notice he’s physically drawing closer. Charles licks his inflamed lip and, just like that, Erik is reset to needing and burning and vowing ‘one more.’ His thumb follows the path Charles’ tongue blazed over the precipice of his lip and begs in his head, ‘Just, please, one more.’

In the morning, in the late, almost-not-anymore morning, Charles and Erik venture down the block to a diner. Erik’s head is wrapped in bubble wrap for all he can comprehend of the world eddying around him; if someone approaches him, they’ll bounce right off, but likely not before something snaps.

He orders a bucket of black coffee. He orders Eggs Benedict, and hopes his ma doesn’t throw something at him from Heaven.

Charles is molten, lounging on the banquette like he’s one of Dali’s clocks and Erik lasts a whole five minutes before he hooks a Converse around Charles’ ankle. ‘Gathering, not trapping,’ Erik tells himself.

Charles is watching an elderly couple in the opposite booth. Erik looks too. They are white haired and she wears a thin, cotton dress with a blue cardy, and he has a jacket on, his trilby resting on the seat next to him. She is talking and waving her hands; he is listening, silently, softly, happily listening. There is a glint off a worn wedding band on her gesturing hand. It strikes at Erik’s photosensitive, hung over brain. It is gold, burnished by years of good night kisses and hands resting gently on backs, as they usher each other through countless doors. It has been scalded by furious arguements and cooled by daily tasks, little variant ways of saying I love you. I love you, I took out the trash. I love you, I made you dinner. I love you, I’m biting my tongue, even though I am right and you are wrong. I love you, you can have my body, it is yours and yours alone.

“Charles,” Erik says, “I just had your epiphany.”

Charles swings his head back from viewing the other booth. His eyes are a puddle of cliff hung tears. “You did?” he questions, hopefully.

“Yeah,” says Erik, reaching across the formica to tangle their fingers together. He jerks his head toward the couple. “They’re the end game. Right?”

“Right,” Charles agrees, and his face might well be a rainbow, lighting up the mist. “Obviously, you’re the one talking and I’m the one diligently listening.”

“Fuck off,” says Erik, lovingly.

“The thing is,” says Charles, “even if you say no-for-now, or no-for-always, I want you to know that my life would be optimum if you were married to me, and I would be honoured, beyond anything I could have hoped for in my life, if you were my husband.”

“I want to give you anything you ask for,” says Erik, with a quicksilver frown.

“But...” says Charles, pulling his hand out of Erik's.

Erik gets a look that Charles calls the aborted sigh look, like he wants to exhale wistfully but is way too tough to do something like that. “Sometimes,” Erik winces, “I think I need you more than want you, and... maybe, that’s not healthy.”

“You just haven’t found your thing in life yet; mine’s genetics. And, maybe, a bit, because I’m your only major friend. I’ve got Raven and Hank, Moira and Sean." Charles puts his hand back over Erik's. "You think you wouldn’t survive if you lost me but you would, Erik, you would.”

“I'd prefer not to test your theory.”

“I swear. I’ll not leave you, or die without first cloning myself.”

Erik laughs, and then does the aborted sigh look again. “I’m really fucking scared, Charles.”

“Me too. Let’s be freaked-the-fuck-out, together.”

“Yeah, I want to.”

Charles leaps onto the seat, hangover forgotten, shouting, “He said yes!”

He plants a trainer on the table, which is, thankfully, still Eggs Benedict free, and launches over it to crash into Erik, knocking him horizontal and administering a blood boiling smooch, crowing in between kisses, "I'm going to marry you; you're mine now, you sexy sod."

When they look up, the old man is giving them the thumbs up. Charles starts giggling. Erik removes his hand from Charles’ arse and struggles to sit up.

“Good luck, boys,” says the elderly lady. “We were your age when we got married. Everyone waits so long these days.”

They leave. Erik observes her straightening his hat, watches him gently pulling a curl at her temple and letting it spring back.

The server dumps two plates in front of them, refilling their mugs.

Charles digs into breakfast, now seated at Erik’s elbow, and Erik, head still spinning, does too. He’s just swallowed some house made hollandaise, when Charles taps his little finger on the back of Erik’s hand and says, “Now you don’t have to think you’re running out of time with me anymore.”

“You knew about that?” says Erik, putting down his fork.

“Yes,” Charles’ eyes are solemn and ancient, set inside a puppy face. “I know you think I’m too good for you, that you’re holding me back and you shouldn’t rely on me... all of which is wrong. In case it isn’t now obvious, I want a lifetime with you. I want to be a self satisfied old man eating brunch with my stern, smug husband.

“Do you think,” continues Charles, “I don’t wonder if you’ll one day have had enough of me?” Erik shakes his head, but Charles says, “... because, if I knew you got up every morning and chose me, it would be... more secure than how you're currently being with me, on impulse. How you're staying out of, um, having no choice.”

“How do I know, you won’t one day get up and choose... not me?”

“You don’t know, I’m sorry, you can’t know for sure. But people do.” He waves his hand at the now empty booth. “Exhibit A.”

“Well,” says Erik, flicking egg yolk around his plate, “if I’m going risk the colossal failure of giving myself over completely to someone, then I prefer to do it with the best available person, my best, well... only, option, really.”

“Awwww. That’s spectacularly romantic.”

“Sarcastic arse.”

“I’m going to get you to see how valuable you are. That’s my job now,” Charles tells Erik, with a quick kiss to the cheekbone.

“Can we get married by a Jedi master?”

“Yes! Can you dress up like Han? I’ll be Luke. Let’s make Raven be Leia and Hank be Chewy.”

“Yes! Can we get matching tattoos in Aurebesh?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the alphabet for the common language in the Galactic Empire...”

“You are such a geek.”

“Sorry, what, boy genius?”

Erik’s hand starts to trace arcs below the waistband of Charles’ jeans, dipping a little deeper each pass. Charles shuffles closer.

‘One more,’ thinks Erik, inhaling desperately in Charles’ hair. Then he stops, and huffs, and says, “Oh.” A sunrise grin develops on his face. It takes over.

“What?” says Charles, around a mouthful of baked beans.

“Nothing. Just wondering how much touching you I can fit into one lifetime.”

Charles throws money on the table, climbs over Erik to get out of the booth, holds his hand out and says, “Let’s find out.”

Chapter Text

“I’m going to miss you, Erik,” says Charles, checking the suitcase contents one more time.

Erik rolls his eyes but allows the corner of his mouth to curve.

“It’s only a week,” he says.

Charles flings himself towards Erik and hugs, squid-like.

“I know,” he says, face smushed in Erik’s collar, “and I know how I’m being.” He wipes a tear away with his thumb.

Erik huffs, kisses Charles on the forehead, and departs.

The taxi ride, airport procedure and flight are bland. Erik thinks over last night’s sex, the goodbye in Charles’ kisses, the unusual insistence regarding positions and the almost too tight embrace.

When he gets to the hotel he rings Charles, but only because Charles will go on and on about worrying otherwise. There is no answer at the house, or on Charles’ cell. He’s probably in a meeting, or lecture, or something. He texts instead, ‘Here safe,’ and takes a selfie standing on the tiny balcony, attaching it and calling the job done.

Then he sits down with his notes and starts to reread them. At six, he digs out a granola bar from the depths of his suitcase and munches while reading. He has no intention of paying inflated hotel prices or walking around looking for a decent restaurant.

Except, he thinks distractedly, something for Charles. Some ridiculous, touristy, kitsch thing. Can he get something without actually entering the chaos of downtown? Erik wanders down to the lobby gift shop, barely remembering his key. Perfect. A fat fountain pen with the Golden Gate Bridge emblazoned on the side in primary colours, and purple coloured ink, and maroon sealing wax and a seal stamp with an encircled X. Job done.

Erik has just enough time to drop the gifts off in his room before he is due at the pre-conference meet and greet.

Back in the lobby, he looks around for signs or banners announcing the conference, but can’t see any American Optometric Association logos. He approaches the desk.

“Excuse me. I’m looking for the AOA meeting?”

The young lady lifts her gaze sharply, her eyes widen.

“Your name?” she inquires.

“Lehnsherr. Erik Lehnsherr.”

“Mr Lehnsherr, I’ll have Sean escort you.” She motions to a heavy lidded, red headed youth in a bell boy uniform, who leads Erik to the elevator and swipes a card over the control panel. Erik frowns. Doesn’t that usually mean penthouse?

When the lift stops, Sean opens the door then steps back. The doors open directly into the penthouse and Erik walks in. There are no optometrists. There are no lecture podiums. There is just one man, his adorable man, smiling shyly and lovingly.

Charles watches Erik, now as always, and Erik feels the affection curling around him. Sometimes, he wants to bat it away. It can’t be for him. That’s when darts of bitterness are flung from Erik’s sharp tongue and, ultimately, absorbed by the cloud of hope Charles carries around him.

“What’s going on?” Erik asks, imperiously.

“I made the conference up. Your workmates helped me. I want to ask you a question.”

Erik drifts closer to Charles. He hopes he’ll know the answer.

“My love,” Charles says, sinking gracefully to one knee, “Will you marry me? I want to fill my life with…”

Erik doesn’t hesitate to say yes, doesn’t even wait until Charles has finished his impassioned speech, interrupting, “Yes.” He says it impatiently, “Of course, yes.”

Charles jumps slightly, but then beams up at Erik, reaching out to hook his arm around the back of his knee.

Erik gets down on the floor with him, noticing the very lush carpet in the room, and grabs the back of Charles’ head to direct those lust-red lips to where he wants.

“There is more to the surprise, Erik,” Charles tells him, after a hot-breathed interlude, “I’ve had the whole thing organized. We can be married in a couple of days.”

Erik blinks. This seems too good to be true. A way to get married without months of Charles being all groomzilla. He grins, widely. “Perfection,” he says.

He kisses Charles again and then checks, “But you don’t need to organise anything tonight, do you?” He rocks in closer and curves his hand around Charles’ ass.

Charles’ grin takes on a truly wicked curve, and Erik’s heart responds by tap dancing. He breathes out; the air expels much more quickly than he is expecting. He’s left with nothing, but Charles sways forward and, nose just tapping Erik’s cheek, smiles, while his breath unfurls over Erik like a spider web in a summer breeze. Erik sucks some in.

Charles says, “I’m going to marry you.”

“Shut up,” grumbles Erik.

“Make me,” taunts Charles. Erik puts his hand over Charles’ mouth and, with his other arm braced around Charles’ torso, picks the professor up and throws him onto the nearest sofa. He begins to unearth, from underneath the tweed and starched collars, a body that always makes Erik’s cock hard and the rest of him soft.

As Erik runs his hands over the powerful thighs, he keeps his mouth fused to Charles’; as he kisses his way down the smooth chest, he keeps his hand or wrist over Charles’ cheeky mouth. It seems odd not to see the juicy lips forming inarticulate sounds and filthy suggestions.

Erik can still tell when he hits a nerve because Charles wriggles and arches and makes subsultus advances.

And Erik can still see Charles’ eyes. They are what he fell in love with. There are telling star systems in Charles’ eyes, galaxies. Erik frequently loses time in them, sometimes wandering around seeing what there is to learn, sometimes racing at light speed to find, once and for all, the reason Charles loves him.

Erik looks at eyes all day, then one day Charles, on a visit from London, came in for emergency replacement glasses and Erik spent fifteen minutes staring into Charles’ exceptional blue eyes, so close he could hear each shallow breath. After which, he turned the lights back on, apologised for wasting Charles’ time, and admitted he’d concluded nothing from the assessment bar that he desperately wanted to take Charles out to dinner, and would Charles mind seeing his associate for eyewear.

Charles accepted the appointment with Erik’s associate and the invitation to dinner and, after months of transatlantic romancing on Charles’ part, and stoic refusal to look at any one else on Erik’s, Charles moved across the ocean and into Erik’s apartment.

For Erik, marrying Charles is a concession, a necessary evil, to keep the status quo.

Erik moves to claim Charles in a way that expresses him better. It’s physical, it’s private and it’s repeated whenever reaffirmation is needed.

******

Az hands Emma a chardonnay and offers Erik a beer.

“Charles said I shouldn’t get drunk.”

“Have a beer, you look nervous.”

“I’m not nervous. I’m not.” Erik rubs his eyebrow. “Gimme the beer.”

He swallows half of it. He pulls his phone out and dials Charles.

“Charles, what sort of beer is this? I only like German beer.”

“My love, I have Bitburger and Hofbräuhaus there. Why are you drinking already?”

“Not drinking, just checking everything out because you’re not here and you said you’d take care of it.”

“I’m almost ready. Well, I’m ready. I’m waiting for Raven.”

“Ok,” says Erik and hangs up.

He downs the rest of the beer.

Someone asks him where they should place the gong.

“One minute,” Erik tells them and calls Charles.

“What, Erik?” Charles sounds pressured: his collarbone is probably red, his eyes are probably darker, he’s probably jutting his pointy chin out. Erik likes to chew on that chin.

“Where does the gong go?”

Charles sighs, “Top table, or next to the microphone. It doesn’t matter really. I have someone there to deal with all of this. Get Moira. She should be taking care of it. You shouldn’t have to do anything, love.”

“Ok,” says Erik and hangs up.

He has another beer.

“Charles is late now,” says Emma, telling time on diamond encrusted Cartier.

Az says “I bet Charles has wised up and doesn’t show.”

“Too noble,” says Emma looking like she stepped in something nasty. “He’ll show.” A pause, then, “What’ll you bet?”

“You want in on this?” Az asks Erik. “Fuck, you look kind of pale.”

“Let’s go out and have a cigarette, sugar,” suggests Emma.

“I gave up.”

“Not today, you didn’t.”

Erik lights up and hopes no one sees his hands shaking. Is Charles nervous? Is that why he’s not here? Maybe Erik should go and meet Charles and they can arrive together. That’d be better, right? Walking into the wedding together; a partnership.

He pulls out his phone, presses the Charles icon and the green call symbol.

“Erik, what now?”

“I just… I wanted… you not to forget a coat.”

There is a deep inhale of breath on the phantom end of the phone. Erik thinks Charles might yell. But he says, with a softness that’s quite a bit worse than yelling, “I’ll be there very soon, my love, very soon. I’ll see you. You’ll see me. We’ll get married.”

“Ok,” says Erik. He hangs up.

Erik stomps on the cigarette butt and sculls the rest of his beer. Then he goes inside to wait next to the celebrant. Erik wipes his hands on his pants a few times. He tries to ignore all the guests and his attendants. He thinks about the light ricocheting around in Charles’ eyes as he knelt before Erik the other day.

‘He wants to marry me. He wants to marry me. He wants to marry me.’ Erik chants to himself, monk-like.

The music changes and Ray Charles starts crooning. Raven appears in the doorway and Erik can’t breathe and he thinks, ‘Go back, go back.’ His foot is already off the cliff though, and the weight of Raven’s slow advance to the dais is already sucking Erik into a gravity-fed spiral, and Charles better be the parachute he promises to be, because Erik can’t stop now, hasn’t wanted to since the first shared breath in that futile eye exam, and Erik will stay bloody and broken with no strength to claw his way back up if this goes wrong.

And, there is Charles. And he looks beautiful. Erik really can’t breathe now. There is something in his nose, air won’t come in, and something in his eyes, like when they go swimming. Erik flares his nostrils trying to suck in some air. He locks his jaw so he doesn’t yell at Charles to walk faster. He presses his lips together because they are wobbling. It’s so odd, what medical reason could there be for wobbly lips? Charles is smiling, hugely, brightly. His skin is lit like each dawn over all time is occurring precisely at the minute of his arrival. Erik is grateful; intensely, reverently thankful.

Charles steps up on the dais and takes Erik’s hand, which makes it clear to Erik how false his hope was that his fear had stayed under the radar. He squeezes Charles’ hand. Charles smiles at him and Erik gets a visceral hit of Charles’ steadfast love, unfurling like a whip.

Some things happen, Erik doesn’t really follow it. Someone sings and someone else talks and he thinks there is some laughter. Erik holds onto Charles’ hand. He presses his traitorous lips together. He watches Charles smiling and glowing and blissfully happy. Erik is making this man happy.

Erik is getting married… to this man. This is the one true thing, the only time he has shown his hand to the world. It feels like he’s doing something right. It feels like Mama would be proud.

When Armando asks Erik to repeat after him, and begins to launch into the standard vows, Erik pushes him back. His legs are buzzing, they buckle until he’s kneeling. His hand slides around inside the cave of Charles’. He squeezes tighter; he doesn’t want them to slip apart.

“Those are someone else’s words,” says Erik, “I don’t have any of my own, but… I just know I wouldn’t be anything, if you weren’t brave enough to love me.”

He manages to stand and grips Charles by the shoulders. “Do you understand me? I really, really, really mean ‘I do’.”

Charles laughs, not unkindly, but with relief and on the edge of a sob. He says shakily, “Oh Erik, I’m so glad you showed up.”

Erik kisses him, shrugging Armando and Az off when they tap him on the shoulder.

“You need to let me complete marrying you,” Armando says.

“Shut up, I’m saying ‘I do’.”

“For God’s sake, let the man kiss me,” begs Charles, pink as a sunset.

“Later,” say both Emma and Raven, in stereo.

Some other stuff happens, Erik still doesn’t really follow it. Only, now he is smiling like a shark who just convinced a baby seal to take a wee swim with him.

When Armando says he can kiss Charles and that they are married, Charles puts both his hands on Erik’s face and says, “I love you, Erik.”

And Erik says, “I know, and please, don’t stop.”

Later, Erik is wrapped around Charles like an octopus who makes his living as a pick pocket, supposedly dancing, but actually getting in some sneaky cuddling.

“You look wrecked, my love,” says Charles.

“It’s hard work ruining a wedding,” Erik tells him. “Besides, I’m a married man now, I can let myself go. I’m going to grow a belly and those nose hairs that stick out.”

Charles laughs, his strong fingers sweeping over Erik’s lean waist. “Ok,” he says, and continues to watch Erik devotedly the rest of the day, and the rest of his life.