They talk a bit, kiss a lot, and don't really ever get off the bed. Erik and Charles is eating my brain, I need to get out my angst before I go in for my midterms. D: And yeah, I don't own.
XXX
Of Scarred Tissue and Broken Kisses
XXX
It doesn't feel right.
Like the wrong shade of blue, a variation of the same old song.
His bare thighs visibly shake as he palms the skin. Tracing fingertips over veins and ghosting blunt nails against the arteries beneath the first layer of skin.
Charles isn't sure what loathe and anger all mixed into one should feel like but this might just be the closest he will ever feel to something akin to it.
"Erik."
"Don't—"
"This isn't pity."
He kisses him right where it hurts the most. Charles can't possibly imagine how to live with this sort of feeling magnified for an entire lifetime. Lips pushing against years of stolen childhood and pain that has long since flared into cold hard hatred. But he wants to understand without robbing Erik of anything else.
"This isn't love either."
Erik says in between the kisses Charles press to his lips, from skin and scars to the junction of his hips. He doesn't say but he knows he won't give in. Erik knows just what Charles want.
(And Charles wants Erik to remember the curve of his mouth, the edge of his teeth and the shape of his tongue.) But he isn't a hopeful romantic, Charles knows what must be done.
He doesn't give Erik the satisfaction or the truth.
Looking up from beneath his lashes, he doesn't give up, he has lived on a perfect construct of lies for much too long.
"This could be."
Erik believes he has no use for a heart.
Charles believes he can do so much more for one man.
000
And you wish you could do better but this, it is good enough.
000
They have sex.
Charles calls it love making, Erik deems it fucking.
And it doesn't matter which one is doing what, something is being done and nothing is left alone. Charles runs the tip of his index finger along the winding scar, tracing down to Erik's spine.
"This hurts."
He states with sadness in his voice.
"More than you would ever know."
He replies with a solemn wish to drop it all.
"Then show me."
But because Charles isn't kind enough, or maybe he isn't kind at all, he lifts his fingers from the experimental scar trailing down Erik's back from days better left behind and motions to his temple instead. Erik doesn't stop him, he isn't even fazed. They have come a long way since the night he pulls him from beneath the waves.
From the first time he pulls back from a searing kiss.
"You don't want to experience it."
Erik insists and Charles feels the same.
"I don't want you to go through it again."
But Erik thinks loudly, recalling images from his youth, biting back the words he has just said. He is much too harsh with himself, even as they are lying bare and naked, in more ways than one. There are lines that need to be said in the fumbling dark and promises that need to be made before the moment passes but they are swallowing the lump in their throats and Charles has his hands on Erik's body once more.
Of metal tables and crooked blades, a man draws blood from wounds and those glasses slide down the bridge of that same man's nose, just a little further. The edge of that rugged knife is rusting or maybe that is drying blood. There are no manic laughs or terror screams, just silence that rings out sharply as the man applies pressure.
There is pain and a silent mantra of stop, stop, stop from a boy strapped down to a metal table.
"…That's…"
He doesn't draw blood and silver twists. Charles is at the halfway point between sick and fear when metal proves a little too resilient in front of a young Erik. The man switches to leather.
"Shaw."
There is the cracking of a whip.
And resentment burns in the deep sting of red lines that stretch over the skin of a child.
There are old surgical scars tracing the muscles of his entire body. Some are short and deliberate, others run long and jagged, but all of this collection is a paler pink than the fleshy tone of usual men.
Erik is an artwork made from raw planted hate, now flushed with rage.
And Charles has no place in his world.
000
And you have already given what is yours to everything he deems important.
000
When the ground opens up, he wishes he can fall into the void with arms around his waist and maybe then he will hope he can survive.
Charles knows he can't take advantage of all this vulnerability.
But it is almost easy.
There is a gun on the bedside table and Erik is still awake. They are only body bags stuffed with bones and pumped with blood. In a simpler perspective, they are body-shaped bags with openings at each end.
There is nothing they can't give up.
Erik's wrist is in his hand and Charles can't find it in him to let go. He wants to hold on until bruises form. Charles wants to leave a scar behind, one made of tender affection, not whiplashes of wrong.
And as hard as it is to believe, this is never about love at first sight. When they are still under water, head deep into a watery grave, they only have each other left to hold on to. There is no one else.
Erik shifts beneath the covers and turns to him.
"This isn't right."
He doesn't see the pink triangle but he knows its there, branding a new scar to add to the collection of wrong he has earned over the years.
"It's different now."
The lie is stale and old, he can't keep this up. It tastes bitter on his tongue and he is running out of lies for the same man, over and over again. Erik reaches out with a hand and brushes his hair aside, a gesture too kind. Charles thinks he is being called out for his lies and this is the bittersweet punishment but Erik doesn't comment on that. Instead, he says:
"You can't honestly believe that, Charles."
And it's like the same old argument, only there is never a variation anymore.
And you can't honestly believe anything I say. "Yes, I do." Charles murmurs softly into the pads of Erik's palms. He smells like warmth, not blood or metal, not anything Shaw believes him to be.
"Speak your mind."
"Some things are better left unsaid, my friend."
Charles smiles up at him as he pulls him close. With fingers ghosting over the dip of Erik's spine, there is nothing they can't give up for a moment longer because they have already lost themselves on the way. They are one.
"You're a good man, Erik."
"I—"
"Let me win this argument, just this one."
He tucks his head beneath his chin and kisses his throat easily. They are pressed, flush and bare, but together and it is almost sweet.
"I didn't know we were arguing."
The soft laugh that follows passes through Charles' lips in dissipating vibrations but it doesn't make it less like he isn't swallowing down his happiness. And he is supposedly the one with the reigns, the one still left in control.
Charles doesn't hold out any longer.
He pulls Erik down and kisses him with an unspoken feeling rising from where their hearts are pressed together.
XXX Kuro
Idek. An evil!Shaw-inflicts-pain-on-Erik fic just turned into a Charles/Erik-let's-roll-around-in-bed-and-never-stop-kissing fic. I have no excuse.