Chapter Text
Caspartina lay in the strange silence of a space more used to noise and people. Usually Charles would have been thrilled to have a bookstore to himself – no tripping over people or working to block out the thoughts of twelve readers reading silently to themselves – but today the thrill came from something entirely different. As Erik led him by the silent bookshelves and empty cash desk and through the door to the back room, Charles barely saw the rows of titles and posters advertising upcoming releases, concentrated as he was on Erik's peculiar, intense quiet and the weight of expectation. It pressed at him until Charles thought he'd break under it.
There was a word in the native language of Tierra del Fuego – Charles recalled it, from one of those websites specializing in strange, possibly inaccurate, information – that meant the look shared by two people who were interested in each other but were both afraid to make the first move. Whatever the word, Charles couldn't remember it specifically but felt it applied to the current situation, seeing as, upon moodily accepting the offering of brisket, Erik had retired to the employee break room. Charles had followed, sitting atop a merchandise table positioned directly across from the door.
The break room was more like a closet, inhabited by an asthmatic refrigerator, a desk with a phone book (but no phone) and employee manual, a rickety chair, and Erik. Charles said something vague about how there should have been one of those posters with information on the minimum wage and worker's rights, and where to go to file grievances. Erik looked up from his dinner long enough to roll his eyes expressively in the direction of Shaw's locked office door.
"If there's anyone capable of leading a revolt, it's you." Charles's sandwich was nowhere near as intriguing as Erik, who was working his way through the brisket with the intense concentration Charles associated with large, feral cats. Erik made a noncommittal noise and swallowed before saying, "If running this place wouldn't be worse than working for it, I would," and Charles laughed.
"Maybe that's why Osborne and Stryker fired you," Charles said. He pushed his sandwich over to a corner of the table; Erik tore his gaze away from his food long enough to watch this, and to allow himself the briefest flicker of a question, are you – ? do you – ? It danced across the surface of his cortex, bright and distracting. Charles shivered. Please, I want this, he thought fervently, I know you do too, because that question had been not so much a question as a sudden bounding of hope and anticipation, a sudden flurry of fantasy – Charles pushing his food away so he could beckon to Erik, so Erik could reach out unhesitatingly to take his hand –
With a sharp exhalation, Erik attacked his potato salad. "How did you know about Osborne and Stryker, anyway?" Suspicion filtered through, cold air through the joints of a door and taking the edge off Charles's ardor.
"Raven told me when I asked about you, that day we met," Charles said as casually as he could. It was not, he suspected, terribly casual.
"So you didn't – " Erik seesawed his hand to indicate telepathic eavesdropping.
"No, I didn't." Not about that at any rate.
Erik's shoulders relaxed, and something in his spine loosened. Charles toyed with the paper wrapping of his sandwich, acutely aware that Erik, despite his apparent absorption with the potato salad, was watching.
"So," Charles said. "Inventory."
"It's not really inventory, just Shaw making up work. He says it's 'loss prevention.'" The amount of scorn Erik managed to fit into loss prevention was truly impressive. He speared a potato with his fork and chewed it ferociously.
"Why're you here, anyway?"
The question, coming as it did around a mouthful of potato salad, was no less direct and startling.
It deserved a direct answer, and so Charles said, "I'd think that would be obvious."
Just because the question deserved a direct answer didn't mean it would get one. Charles thought, very gently – the psionic equivalent of a whisper – that Erik was quite nice-looking, and that he would not at all mind if Erik got it into his head to stand up, come over, insinuate himself between Charles's knees, and kiss him senseless.
Erik twitched and shook his head like shaking away a fly. To Charles's endless delight, Erik closed the Styrofoam carton and set it aside, and stood up, the expression on his face absolutely determined, and every cell in Charles's body sang with elation as Erik approached, close enough in the claustrophobic interior of the stock room for Charles to see the interplay of light and shadow in Erik's grey, grey eyes, and every hormone-secreting gland rejoiced as Erik leaned in even closer – leaned in to pick up the printout he'd abandoned earlier, and gripped it tight enough for the paper to crumple.
And like that Erik wasn't close anymore. Charles watched in mute amazement as Erik spun on his heel and marched out of the stockroom, the door swinging shut behind him after he pushed through it.
After processing his way through that for a moment, because what in the hell, he couldn't have been more open about what he wanted – and after spending an even longer moment wondering if his telepathy had let him down, and if, god forbid, Raven was right – Charles scrambled off his table, reflexively grabbed his bookbag, and chased Erik out into the store proper.
He found Erik staring dully at the Essays section, absently holding a copy of C.F. Xavier's Essays on the Metahuman. Despite suspicious looks when people connected him with one of the world's first-acknowledged telepaths, Charles was proud to say, yes, he was related to that C.F. Xavier, but at the moment he wished the damn book didn't exist. He wished Erik would look at him, and that Raven hadn't been right – that the things people didn't want to admit to themselves were the things that needed to be left alone and not poked and prodded at.
Charles was, unfortunately, very good at poking and prodding.
Eisenhardt's A Posthuman Manifesto sat on the shelf, a strange companion to Xavier's book. Charles had read both, of course – they were required reading for any young mutant, sort of like how Atlas Shrugged had been required reading for the unbearable young men in Charles's freshman philosophy class.
"There was a lot of fighting over terminology back then," he said. The words came out of him without his willing them, just to fill the silence. "Xavier thought metahuman sounded more inclusive, and acknowledged the fact that people with extraordinary mutations were still biologically human, and at that time mutant had so many negative connotations. Eisenhardt preferred mutant or posthuman himself, to emphasize what he saw as mutant exceptionalism."
Erik snorted. "Did you major in Mutant Studies?"
"No such thing," Charles said, which Erik knew well enough. A handful of college courses touched on mutants in literary, historical, and social contexts; most of the work was still scientific, and done on mutants. There'd been all sorts of ethical hand-wringing over using mutant students in clinical and genomic trials at Harvard and MIT; Johns Hopkins was at the center of a lawsuit.
"I like mutant," Erik said decisively. "We should reclaim it."
"I suppose we have, in a sense." Charles had seen Raven's MUTANTAND PROUD banner; she'd been wearing it in the police station after she'd been picked up for indecent exposure at a pride parade. Other words fumbled clumsily around his brain, having to do with how magnificent Erik's powers were and the whole, confusing spectrum of thoughts and images that unfurled across Charles's awareness whenever he thought of him.
Erik bit his lip, ruffled the pages of Essays with his thumb. This close, the confusion-want-anger that sluiced off him caught Charles up in the eddies and swirls of it, Erik wanting him and not certain what to do about it, and angry at not being certain when Erik was certain of most things in his life. Charles thought, suddenly and uncomfortably, of Raven and how people don't like it when you tell them things they haven't figured out yet, or don't want to admit to themselves, and he imagined what would happen if he pressed the issue now.
It wouldn't be anything he wanted, Charles figured.
"Erik," he began, trying very hard not to think about the steel-cord tension that thrummed in Erik's body and the same tautness in his mind, like a wire pulled tight. "Erik – I am sorry, truly." Erik didn't look at him, and while Charles had the sense that, despite his apparent fixation on the book, all of Erik's attention was fastened firmly to him, he didn't dare go further into the treacherous currents of Erik's head. "I've got work too, so I'll head out, I guess… I hope I didn't get you in trouble with Shaw – you know, with dinner and all."
Erik didn't say anything.
"Right. I'll see you later, then." Charles turned around, trying hard not to taste the disappointment that crowded thick in his throat and thought, very deliberately, of the process involved in getting to his office and the safety of the qualifying exam reading he shouldn't have left. It was curiously like being drunk, working through the haze of great work, Xavier and desire so suddenly cooled he was almost dizzy with the shift, walk to Kenmore, Green Line up to Park, Red Line to Harvard Square, up Peabody Street, across Cambridge, far entrance to Bauer. If he thought about that hard enough, and the importance of paying with his Charlie Card instead of the Oyster card he still carried around, he'd be able to ignore the quiet, festering confusion radiating off Erik, the sudden spike of no no no as Charles made for the door. Charles hunched up in his jacket and reconstituted his shields, because it was either that or drip disappointment and humiliation all over the place, and Boston did not need to know Charles F. Xavier (the second telepath of that name) had had his ego and heart beaten to a comprehensive pulp.
Distantly, he heard a soft thump, as of something hard hitting the wood flooring.
"Wait," and that was Erik, voice hoarse and catching on something Charles couldn't let himself think about. And then, silently, Erik said Charles, and pretty much everything Charles could and couldn't identify was wrapped up in his name, so he had turn back around, holding his satchel for dear life.
Erik had dropped the copy of the Essays and usually Charles would have something to say about that, but Erik was staring at him, somewhere between lost and determined – someone who'd found himself lost, maybe, and had resolved to find his own way out – and it was hard to think about anything other than that. Charles kept his mind to himself, and oh that was hard too, but it seemed only fair because Erik couldn't read his mind, and so he let himself be looked at.
Whatever Erik saw there must have been good, because the tides shifted and intent came off him in waves that battered away everything else. Charles thought stupidly of pheromones before he realized Erik was thinking at him, the intensity of it almost shouting, a clamor of please tell me I can do this please don't hate me I want this I want you it'll be so so good and yes was all Charles could say or think to that before he dropped his bookbag.
Erik kissed like it was everything, his thin, hard mouth softening into generosity as it shaped itself to Charles's. He licked at Charles's lips like he even needed to wait for an invitation, and Charles let him in – disgracefully quickly, really, but he'd been waiting ages for this, after all. The sound Erik made when Charles kissed him back was perfect, electric, a spark that catalyzed pleasure deep in Charles's gut and spread it up and down his spine.
Wanted this wanted you so bad, Erik thought at him hungrily, and oh god, Charles was very not prepared for that, although really how could you be, with Erik Lehnsherr staring at you with his mind and eyes steamed up like car windows when – the metaphor cut off when Erik bit enthusiastically at Charles's lower lip, and Charles had to reciprocate.
"Maybe we should," Charles began, and had to finish with a silent take this somewhere not so obvious, because Erik was doing something extremely disconcerting to his neck, licking and nipping at the pulse point where it throbbed under Charles's jaw, and he was doing it directly in front of the glass window that fronted the store.
With an impatient noise, Erik dragged him back to their old quiet corner, the philosophy and religion section. Shaw didn't have much use for either philosophy or religion, Charles figured, and he issued a silent apology to Hegel, Heidegger, and Kant, whose spines now had Charles's back pressed up against them, and his foot nudging a copy of Human, All Too Human out of the way as he used the lowest shelf for some leverage and a bit of extra height. Erik was really unfairly tall.
"And narrow," Charles mumbled, because it was true. Erik seemed to exist in two dimensions when looked at a certain way, all clean Euclidean lines and, "are you thinking about geometry?" Erik asked, his voice shivery and rough both at once.
"Possibly," Charles said cagily. "What of it?"
Erik made a noise and kissed him again, and pawed anxiously at the untucked tails of Charles's shirt. Charles stretched up, and oh yes this was better even precariously balanced as he was, with his toes braced on the lowest shelf and Erik's steel-cord arms supporting him. Like this he could kiss Erik properly, and by properly he meant pushing into Erik's mouth and feeling it go pliant beneath his own and feeling Erik's mind go pliant too, thinking how much he liked it like this, trading dominance between the two of them. He – and by he he didn't know if he meant himself or Erik – could sink into this, could keep going down and down, held up only by how much he wanted to get at skin and see what else could produce those marvelous noises, only – only –
* * *
"Fuck."
"What?" Charles was staring at him, blue eyes hazy, like glass clouded over. "What?"
"Shaw." Erik felt as hazy as Charles looked, and had to struggle to clarify himself. "Security cameras."
Shaw's paranoiac impulses had competed with, and defeated, his cheapskate nature in this one regard. He might have trusted his employees to be vigilant against shoplifters, but qui custodiet ipsos custodes, had the security cameras put in to deter what he'd called "inside jobs" at their last staff meeting. He'd eyed all of them like they were criminals in waiting, biding their time until some weakness presented itself.
Of course, what he thought he'd accomplish with magnetic tape and cameras bolted to the wall with metal screws, Erik had no idea. Wiping the tapes was easy, managing the screws a little more difficult with Charles twisting impatiently against him.
"You didn't have to do that," Charles pointed out after three sets of cameras fell to their deaths.
"Yes, I did."
And with that, Erik decided, they could get back to more important things, like getting under Charles's shirt for one. And getting under that – "Hmmm," Erik breathed, because Charles was firm and soft both at once, sturdy in a way he both expected and found surprising – yeah, getting under that was perfect. Charles sighed happily and bit approvingly at Erik's collar bone, and Erik felt Charles's smile woven through his own pleasure and pressed against the skin at the base of his throat.
"'S nice," Charles mumbled as he worked at Erik's belt; clumsier than usual, Erik needed a moment to pull it loose, his power twining awkwardly with Charles's fingers. "Most people aren't – 's weird, the mind-thing."
How could it be weird, Erik thought, more fiercely than he intended, it could only be weird if you were a fucking idiot. That's what I think, Charles thought confidingly at him, red-red mouth plush under Erik's now, so wonderfully responsive and his delight absolutely everywhere, and the only way this could get any better would be – This? Charles said, and insinuated his hand into Erik's boxers.
The sound Erik made was a sound he would deny ever making. It was high and thin and desperate, arcing out of his throat like his hips arched into Charles's hand. He could only hold on, really, clutch Charles to him and bury his face against Charles's neck with Charles's slick fingers working their deliberate way down the length of his cock and Charles thinking at him, pleased thoughts about suspicions being confirmed and how much Erik wanted him.
"You don't even know," Erik huffed raggedly, because telepath or not, Charles honestly couldn't know what it had been like to spend months hovering over that depthless pit of want and trying to tell himself he wasn't.
Charles did something twisty and interesting with his wrist that had Erik shivering and ineffectually biting back a cry. His free hand had settled on Erik's cheek, anchoring enough for Erik to drag his eyes open and look at Charles looking at him.
"I do know," Charles said, and something about the physical fact of his voice, and the rush of sensation that came behind it – Charles tangled up in Erik's synapses and aching with wanting to tell him everything and having to keep it all back – hit him like a freight train.
Only, he could have stopped a freight train and there was no stopping this because Charles was inexorable and didn't care how powerful Erik was. He heard, distantly, Charles encouraging him, telling him how amazing he was and god, just look at you Erik, you're magnificent, so awed like Charles couldn't believe it. And maybe it was the awe that did it, the extra nudge over, the awe and Charles's fingers tugging him over the edge, and when he fell and hit the bottom, he came apart.
Coming back to himself was like being put back together, the pieces not quite fitting the way they used to. He'd shaped himself to Charles, and both of them had slumped to the floor, with Erik resting against his chest and Charles's thighs bracketing him. They quivered against Erik's sides where they pressed together, and what skin Erik could feel was sweat-sticky and cooling. He couldn't feel but could see Charles's heartbeat in the flicker of pulse in his neck, and that seemed to be calming, too. He looked much as Charles must have felt, Erik supposed as he took stock of himself, shirt undone and cock rather embarrassingly hanging out of his boxers, and his bones too liquefied for him to do much about either of those things, even if he wanted to.
Feebly, Charles stirred against him, and mostly succeeded in nuzzling under Erik's chin.
"Good god," Charles huffed against his neck, "I came in my pants."
"Not very dignified of you," Erik said, somewhat amazed that he could remember how words worked, much less how to have a conversation. Charles's lashes, his nose, his lips brushed the skin by his larynx, a series of absent kisses.
Charles snorted. "I couldn't help it. One of us orgasms very loudly."
"I hope," Erik said, "You're not expecting an apology."
"Not in a million years," Charles said, dry as dust, and laughed into the disarray of Erik's hair.
* * *
The damage to the cameras and the video tape had, predictably, come out of Erik's paycheck. And then, because Erik had been infuriatingly unbothered by Sebastian's calculations as to how many months Erik would need to make restitution, Sebastian had exacted further vengeance by forcing Erik to put together the front window and endcap displays for the most recent YA vampire-werewolf romance. The trade paperbacks were for the movie tie-in, which meant Erik had to spend far more time than he wanted trying to force into cooperation the stand-ups of pale, brooding twentysomethings. In the end, the male romantic lead had a cardboard-brown scar running across the chiseled line of his jaw, and the dark, dubiously-ethnic werewolf character was missing one of his dark, smoldering eyes.
"It's done, isn't it?" Erik said when Sebastian pointed out that the goal of such displays were to entice customers, rather than repel them. "But if you want it done properly, you could always find another person."
Sebastian made a noise of profound and frustrated displeasure, and, tugging at his jacket, retired behind the cash desk. Raven didn't even bother to hide a few student copies of Great Expectations under a few new hardbacks, and more or less ignored him while he huffed and paced impotently, glaring at the stack of reserved books before retiring into his office.
Not for the first time, he toyed with the possibility of firing Lehnsherr altogether. The security cameras still pained him – he was fairly certain he'd been overcharged, and his insurance refused to cover "mutant-related" damages – and on top of that, he had begun to sense the early ferment of rebellion. There was Raven to start with, and even Cassidy had begun to bring in coffee in the mornings – first small doppio espresso shots, but now… now, Sebastian thought blackly, a small forest of travel mugs clustered underneath the cash desk and had begun to take over the break room. Alex's reading recommendations had steadily become more disturbing. Parents had started to complain.
Lehnsherr was at the root of it, of course. Sebastian ground his teeth, remembered his dentist's warnings, and forced himself to relax. Lehnsherr had balked him since day one, had somehow overcome Sebastian's strategy of divide and conquer, and set himself up as the leader of the most incompetent group of retail associates known to man or mutant. Even now, Sebastian scowled at the feeds from the security cameras, he was leaning back against an endcap across from where the Religion and Philosophy section used to be, talking animatedly with – with –
Sebastian looked at the other screen, with the camera feeding in from the opposite angle. Lehnsherr was talking with Charles Xavier of all people, Charles Xavier with his arms full of books. While he recalled their conversation, which had mostly involved Charles smiling pleasantly at him and saying polite things about supporting independent, mutant-owned businesses in his polite English accent, Sebastian started grinding his teeth again.
There would be no getting rid of Lehnsherr, not until Lehnsherr wanted to go. In fact, given that Xavier's trust fund could probably support Sebastian's entire incompetent staff without breaking a sweat, Sebastian suspected that Lehnsherr was sticking around simply to torture him. Lehnsherr was the sort of person to do that, torture someone for no reason whatsoever.
Life was very hard for the small businessman, Sebastian decided. Very hard indeed.
* * *
Initially Charles had been worried that their exploits (Charles's term) would have dire repercussions on the stability of Erik's employment, and that Erik would be too proud and stubborn to accept any help from him whatsoever. While Erik had his pride, he found he was happy to sacrifice it in one particular: introducing Charles as his boyfriend, and Charles suggesting that anything Shaw did to make Charles unhappy with respect to Erik's work situation would be reflected in the number of books Charles bought every month.
"Dude," Sean said, when Erik had walked out of his meeting with Shaw concerning restitution for the security cameras, "Dude, do you think – "
"I'm not using Charles to get your damn coffee," Erik told him.
Still, a month later, Raven, Alex, and Sean found themselves kept late to move the Philosophy and Religion section down to the used-books basement while Shaw talked to Janos about the legalities of acquiring food and beverage licenses. Six months after that, Caspartina added Darwin to its roster, for eight dollars an hour – with the possibility ("the remote possibility," Shaw clarified) of a raise after six months of regular employment.
Initially Charles had been disappointed to see the Philosophy and Religion section relegated to the downstairs – "Just because they don't involve vampires or, or wizards doesn't mean they're not important" – but then Erik had crowded him up against disapproving volumes of Schopenauer and Spinoza and it had been enough like old times to pacify him.
Life was good, Erik reflected. It had taken awhile, but Shaw's megalomania had been checked, and now he almost – almost – looked forward to going to work. Still, he vastly preferred his two days off, or sometimes even better, locking up after Shaw released him for the night and making his way back up to Cambridge.
This, in fact, was what he was doing this particular night, letting himself into their apartment as quietly as he could. He'd half-expected to come back to an empty set of rooms, but the body-warm circle of Charles's watch rested in the study, quite still. Reading, Erik supposed, because the pile of books and articles that comprised Charles's dissertation exam reading list was never-ending. He dumped his computer bag on its chair (the kitchen table, despite Charles's protestations, had quickly been converted to a central receiving platform for all books and papers) and wound his way through the comforting dimness of the apartment, all old wood and brass-studded leather furniture, like something out of an old university club.
Charles might have walked right out of one of those places, too, except for the fact that at the moment his stillness wasn't due to reading, but rather to being completely and utterly dead to the world, face mashed into a printout, a furrow running across his brow as though, despite being asleep, he was trying to absorb the article's information by osmosis.
Erik's heart did something complicated. Whatever it was, it translated to warmth and impatience, soft-edged and softening still more when Charles stirred, blinked, and peeled his face off the article. Charles's presence in the back of his mind, almost everyday but still startling whenever Erik allowed to think about it, felt like clumsy fingers, stroking awkwardly but still pleasant for all that.
"Errk," Charles said, peering up at him. "Wha – what are you doing back already? I thought you were working tonight."
"It's past nine." Erik rolled his eyes as Charles tried to rub the sleep out of his. "I don't suppose you actually took the day off like you said you were going to."
"I took the day off," Charles said. He felt shifty in Erik's head.
"But not the night," Erik said with all the sarcasm he could manage. It was quite a bit. "Come on, I didn't get Shaw to let me off early so I could watch you drool on…. 'Neural pathway development in X-gene positive non-telepaths.'"
"Shaw let you off early?" Charles said this around a gigantic yawn. "How did you manage that?"
"I have my ways."
"You do," Charles agreed. He smiled, lazy and sly, and with his eyes still sleep-hazed he looked – Erik swallowed hard. He looked. He had his t-shirt on inside out, and was wearing jeans Erik liked mostly because they were loose enough to tug off Charles's hips.
"Take me to bed?" Charles asked, the sharpening in his voice (still rough around the edges) saying he'd more than caught on to Erik's interest.
"I don't know." Erik pretended to consider this. "Are you planning to fall asleep once we're there?"
"Eventually," Charles said, "but not right away."
Charles was also, Erik noticed, wearing a belt. He tugged at it meaningfully and, with a quirk of his lips, Charles came. Toner had rubbed off on his cheek, and Erik nosed at it thoughtfully, smiling a bit at the thought of Charles's formidable concentration finally lapsing enough for him to zone out and drift off.
"I'm glad I amuse you," Charles grumbled into the hollow of Erik's neck. He nipped the skin there, right above Erik's pulse point, reprovingly.
"You do a lot more than that," Erik said. He would have been embarrassed at his honesty if Charles hadn't gotten it and then let it go in favor of lacing his fingers through Erik's and pulling him through the door to their bedroom, and letting Erik lay him back in the mess of covers and twine the two of them close, close, close.