Charles tried to keep his stretching to a minimum in the morning in order to not wake Erik. The man was an incredibly light sleeper, like a soldier constantly battle-ready. The slightest motion and he was up and raring to go. With practice though, Charles had managed to work out a system to keep the man sleeping long enough to simply stare at him.

He loved to see Erik sleeping, and it was a rare day that the man ever fell asleep before him, so mornings were really his only opportunity.

The man made a beautiful picture, the sun sliding through the shades, and all that beautiful, milky skin on display, the covers pulled down to barely hang over angular hips in the heat of the summer night. Erik's hair was a soft sort of copper, but on the rest of his body it was downright gingery, which Charles found impossibly endearing. When he'd first seen Erik naked he had been a little surprised at his boniness, although he thought he'd done a good job not letting it show, and he was used to it by now. It seemed to be the normative state, considering the fact that he had had his boyfriend eating at least one calorie-packed meal a day now and Erik still didn't seem to have gained an ounce.

He spent a minute just watching the movement of the man's ribs as he breathed softly on his back, one pale arm reaching towards Charles, his head facing towards him. Normally Erik slept about wrapped as fully around Charles as he could get, but that was harder to manage in the summer with no air-conditioning.

He could see the nail-marks were Tom had grabbed his man, dull red against snow-white. There was road-burn over one elbow and his palm was marked with gravel. He grit his teeth and had to work for a moment to let the anger slide from him. Instead of sliding away, though, it slid down, sinking into the pit of his stomach and pressurizing itself into a bitter pit there. But at least it was out of his mind. He considered calling Carter Ryking again and telling him he'd changed his mind, Ryking couldn't make his own decision, he had to listen to Charles' demands and fire Tom on the spot. More than fire him, destroy him.

He pushed those thoughts aside to join the pit massing in his gut. Tom had learned his lesson. If Ryking fired him it'd be his decision, not Charles' work. All he'd done was warn the man that Tom was disobeying his orders, was going to get himself into trouble out here if he wasn't extremely careful and he already wasn't being careful at all.

Silently as he could manage, he pushed up onto one elbow and reached, fingertips barely brushing over Erik's auburny fringe. The man blinked awake immediately, making Charles grin bitterly. Even after the exhausting work of last night the man couldn't manage to sleep through feather-light touches. Amazing.

Erik's face scrunched up with the confusion of being woken up and he turned petulantly into Charles' embrace, dragging him down off his elbow and into a sleepy cuddle, pressing his face into Charles' collar.

"Wha'd'you wake m'up fer?" he grumbled, hugging Charles tightly around the middle. He grinned into mussed hair, stroking it back and eliciting those quaint purring noises.

"Sorry, kitten, I forgot what a light sleeper you were," he teased, technically lying. But to admit that he simply hadn't minded the idea of Erik awake and with him, looking at him, talking to him, wrapped around him and purring, sounded too needy.

He moved his hands down, rubbing, massaging over Erik's ribs and the knobs of his spine, over the freckles of his shoulders and back, down to the bones of his hips. The taller man nipped his collarbone and rubbed his shin over Charles'.

"I've got to check in on the cafe today. Maybe work a little if it's busy. Want to keep me company?" the man sighed.

Charles wondered if this offer was due to Erik's boredom working the cafe alone, or if the man was actually wanting to keep an eye on him, so he said, "Maybe I'll just wait for you at home."

Erik pushed up onto a shoulder, looking at him with furrowed brows and Charles' breath caught at the beautiful sheen of his eyes, as it always did. They were truly gorgeous eyes, spanning the line from gray to blue to green and always so piercing.

"Why don't you want to come?" he questioned, as if genuinely confused. His Irish always came through more thoroughly when he was upset, or when he read any sort of poetry-he claimed that it wasn't a poem until you gave it an Irish accent. It was pretty Irish now.

"I'll come if you really want me to. I'm just not sure if I'll be able to walk there after last night."

Erik's laughter was a cute sort of bark and he fell back onto the bed beaming with all his teeth, so handsome it still had the power to shock Charles. When the man rolled onto his back a strong arm around Charles' waist dragged him along, too, so that he was half on top of his boyfriend, a wonderful position to be in.

"You don't mean to tell me you're sore!" Erik laughed. He leaned forward and kissed the laughter from those lips, the slide of their skin and the memory of what had made him so sore coupled with the morning enough to make him half-hard already.

"I am but it was worth it. You're so incredibly hot when you're fucking your way through me," Charles breathed, stopping the taller man dumb with his rather wanton talk. It thrilled him that his voice and his body could have such an effect on the most attractive man he had ever been able to entice. It still seemed as if eventually Erik should realize he was much more attractive than Charles-although the man had stated similar sentences about him, so both of them seemed to think they were dating out of their league.

Erik held his face in those long hands and kissed him breathless and Charles loved anew that way of kissing Erik had, of pressing, licking in with his tongue, chasing Charles' lips when he even slightly pulled back.

"Give me half a chance, I'll do it to you again," the man promised, or maybe threatened, the words vibrating into his mouth.

Glorious as that sounded, he wasn't sure his body could take it, so he decided frottage would have to do just as well. He snatched their lube from the nightstand, yanked the tangled sheets from between them, loving the way Erik wriggled and grappled him as they fell back together, slicked and ready. He straddled those slim hips, holding Erik's face to kiss as the other man held his waist to thrust. He ground down, coiling, circling, grinding, enjoying the way Erik groaned out his name, the way the man's eyes slipped back as if Charles were truly a god of sex.

He licked his tongue over Erik's panting, gasping lips, reached down to work a hand between their writhing bodies, took the man firmly and elicited the cry of his name, enjoying the gulping frustration he could bring about simply by working his grip not-quite-fast-enough. Erik's long hands dug roughly into the angles of his arse, pulling him down and in as the taller man ground up into him, hips hitching.

Charles wondered what he could say to make the man come, or if he should merely bring it about with his hand, his hips, rather than his smart mouth. He scraped the stubble of their cheeks together on his way to nip, lick and suck at Erik's jaw, the lobe of his ear and his throat and the angle of his collarbone, the mean mark Tom had made on him, gasping and groaning and hissing Erik's name as the rutting pace of their bodies increased.

"Charles, Charles," Erik panted, those short nails digging into his flesh and spurring him on.

He opened his mouth to speak, first instinct to see if he was still capable of thinking up inspired enough slutty talk to make his man moan. But his mind passed up on that task without asking his opinion, and landed further along.

"I love you, Erik," he gasped, one hand grappling at the man's slick shoulder, the other working his thick cock with a passion. They couldn't quite manage to kiss like this, but he spoke against Erik's jaw, his throat, as if his words were a kiss. "I love you; God I love you, my darling, my everything, my Erik, Erik."

Those hips under him, fast and erratic, jerked hard and the man's head kicked back; the long line of throat choking out his name like it was wrung from him and feeling that long hot cock spurting against him, twitching and burning, tipped him over and he was coming too, hard and sweet, mingling their come between their enmeshed bodies so that Charles resisted the urge to slip off, just stayed there panting against Erik's heaving chest, breathing in the scent of their skin and their sweat and their come like it was all one shared entity.

Erik used his regained motor control to stroke Charles' hair back, and then let his hands roam over every piece of Charles they could reach as if devoting him to tactile memory.

"Take a shower with me?" Erik rasped and Charles nodded, half-asleep again with the exhaustion of his orgasm.

"Will you carry me?" It was only when Erik laughed and went to do just that that he realized the brute thought he was serious.

"It was a joke! I don't need you to carry me!" he whined, wriggling in the taller man's bridal carry.

"That's not what you said," Erik grinned back smugly. With more time he could have thrashed his way free, but it was a bare couple meters to the shower so Erik had easy work.

As revenge he went after the man under the spray with the loofah.

Erik hated the loofah. The man firmly believed it was some sort of medieval torture device, had no belief in its exfoliating capabilities any more than he believed in the exfoliating properties of a knife. He relented when Erik yelped in actual pain, petting at rubbed-raw mark on his side that exactly two swipes of the sponge had scratched into his snowy-white skin.

Laughing but apologizing, he got Erik's mind off it by washing his hair for him, about making the man melt down the drain. When the leftover shampoo was washed away Erik was grinning and affectionate, about as close to ecstatic as he got. The man wrapped him in his long pale arms and held him close, kissing him under the spray.

"Have I mentioned that I love you?" the git questioned, smiling down at him in that way that crinkled his eyes. Charles of course couldn't help but beam back, arms secure around his boyfriend's shoulders.

"Perhaps, but I never tire of hearing it," he admitted. He truly didn't. He didn't even have the excuse of not hearing the phrase very often: Raven, Moira, even Logan if he was drunk enough, said it to him plenty. Even before that all his boyfriends had said it to him often enough, even Steven, whom he'd only dated for a month. Granted Reed had never said it to him in public, but still: it wasn't a phrase he was unaccustomed to hearing.

And yet when Erik said it it felt so much deeper, maybe because it wasn't a phrase Erik tossed around very flippantly. When Erik said it he knew the man meant it in a way that few others ever had. He could feel it was something that would last forever.

"Ich liebe dich, Mausi," the man murmured to him again, sliding their cheeks together to war their stubble. It itched but Charles loved it for the playful motion that it was. He didn't think there was anything more amazing than Erik in a playful mood.

"How do you say, 'Shut up and kiss me' in German?" he laughed.

"Mein Freund ist wirklich gut ausgestattet," Erik informed him, kissing him only lightly and teasingly, waiting for him to repeat before he doled out the real thing.

"Mein Freund, hm? Funny, I was under the impression that meant 'my boyfriend'."

Erik just grinned back toothily. "It means, 'my boyfriend, shut up and kiss me.' I want to make sure you don't use the phrase irresponsibly," the man assured.

He smiled back, fine with playing along. "Ach, mein sexy Freund ist wirklich gut ausgestattet," he hummed back low in his throat and gravelly, sliding his hands flat over those angular hips and that equally angular arse.

Erik beamed back at him, kissed him into the wall and only a failing hot water heater kept either of them from getting an increasingly sore arse that morning.

"We've both of us been very irresponsible tops this weekend," Charles pointed out, his arsehole twinging still as they got dressed.

"I feel fine now," Erik shrugged, smile still secure. He supposed the man had a reason to be so very happy this morning: he'd gotten reamed well and good the other night, got to see Charles' evil ex beaten black and blue last night, and gotten to play with his Halloween costume all the rest of last night. Which reminded him...

"I'll have to bring my lederhosen back to the dry cleaners today," he sighed unhappily. They really were going to ban him. He was going to have to cultivate a new dry cleaner connection.

"When my costume comes in the mail you'll understand how much you're asking of me to leave it alone till October."

Charles didn't doubt it. Those beautifully long lean legs of his boyfriend's all trussed up in British schoolboy shorts? The little cane it came with that would definitely have to be kept at Erik's house to avoid Raven overhearing any disciplinary action? His cock was twitching with just the thought of it. Erik could tell, apparently, based on his libidinous gaze, or maybe the man was just good at reading him these days.

"Okay, okay," he sighed in vague agreement, and changed the subject. "Come on, now, I'll make you breakfast."

"You're crazy!" Erik scoffed. "I ate breakfast and dinner yesterday. I'll be full till tomorrow at least!"

"Full of my cock if you don't put some meat on those bones."

Erik just grinned back at him. "Oh Helligkeit, I really don't think you understand how threats work."

(*Mein Freund ist wirklich gut ausgestattet: My boyfriend is really hung.)

With Erik around it was surprisingly easy to forget about Tom, which amazed him in some ways. When he was younger he would often imagine what he'd do if he saw Tom again: tear him apart, give him a good talking to, flaunt how much better off he was without the man, what? But now he'd been away from Tom for so long, removed from all the intense emotions Tom had dragged out of him all those years ago, that it was hard to remember the exact taste of his embarrassment, his humiliation and his heartbreak. Especially with a mouthful of Erik, both literally and metaphorically speaking.

When he and Tom had broken up, or rather when Tom had broken up with him, putting the 'break' in 'break-up', he had thought he might die from the pain of it. The pain on top of pain of it; it had all seemed like more than he was capable of surviving. Afterwards he had technically been alive but it was only in the sense that he had a pulse. He felt badly for everyone that knew him at that time: Raven having to put up with it, and Reed for settling for it, all of his friends for being ignored in favor of his own selfish pain. His real self was so much more than who he had been at that time. It was strange to think that Reed had dated someone so different to who he was now: someone needier, sadder, less of a whole person. Strange to think that Tom had dated that same person! Cultivated it, really—drawn out those characteristics in him. How strange that Reed and Tom had both preferred that person to whom he was now! Erik would have hated him them. Another reason not to wish he had met Erik earlier, as he often daydreamed.

The thing was, Tom hadn't just broken up with him, hadn't just shown up one day and told him it was over. Instead he cut Charles down, stomped him down until he was low enough to walk away from, until he was nothing more than a useless hull you sold for scrap metal.

How amazing that humans were resilient enough to grow back from something like that. That Charles felt nothing in common with that poor boy who'd had his heart plucked out and dashed against the paving stones...he felt pity, but that was about it. He didn't feel the sort of embittered need for revenge that Erik or Raven or even Logan felt-and Logan hadn't even been there for that! Well, neither had Erik, but Erik was at least influenced enough by the leftover scars of the situation to have an understandable connection, and how silly even those scars seemed now that he could look on seeing the actual Tom again with nothing like his past pain.

Erik and the lot of them honestly probably felt more than Charles did at Tom suddenly turning up again, which was pretty strange. Charles felt that he should feel something. Anger, maybe; he had always pretty much planned on anger when he was younger. Well, admittedly right after the breakup he had mostly planned on confusion. If Tom had shown up on his doorstep then, his monologue would have been mostly strained questions. Why had Tom done that to him? Tom had loved him, he had loved Tom, why had Tom hurt him like that-on purpose and remorselessly, pitilessly?

Afterwards it had boiled down to anger: if he saw Tom again he'd slap him, or spit on him, something really dramatic and violent. He was glad that Tom never had come around at that time; he thought the mortification of actually having done any of that would have been even worse than the horror of everything Tom had done to him. He couldn't control Tom's actions, but he could control his own, and there was obviously more embarrassment regarding something you could help than something you couldn't.

The hardest part was thinking that maybe if it hadn't been for Tom he would have been okay. He could have survived his grandfather's death, his mother's death…even breaking up, if it had only been a breakup. It would have been hard, the hardest thing he'd ever done, but he could have done it, he thought. He'd never know for sure. All he had now was the fact of the spiraling depression Tom had shoved him in to and the years of himself that he had lost to dragging his way back out of it. But he had done it. He was stronger now for having done it.

Now Charles just felt removed from the whole situation, as if a different Tom had done that stuff to a different him. Maybe it was just because his life was so very good now, it was hard to think of a time when his life had been so awful. It made him realized that Tom didn't really have a hold on his life now, that Tom hadn't been able to hurt him as much as he had always imagined because he had grown back from it, and that Tom wouldn't be able to hurt him like that again because Tom would never mean as much to him now as he had then.

"I was thinking," he said suddenly, holding Erik's hand as they scoped out the street market up past the elementary school.

"Hm?" Erik questioned, looking away from the bunches of flowers they sold. Charles thought about buying him them, buying the man the whole stall, smiled up at him in the sunshine of a glorious Sunday morning.

"I was thinking: I'd be okay with you tying me up. If you were still interested in it."

Erik stopped walking, just stared at him. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, as if maybe Erik had never been interested in it, as if he were a slutty freak for thinking he was interested in it. If Tom's traumas seemed ridiculous now maybe one day those would too.

But then the glint returned to Erik's eye, and he could breathe easy again-the man didn't think he was a freak. Slut, maybe, but not a freak.

"What's brought this on?" he asked, moving his hand, still holding Charles', around to the nape of Charles' back.

"It's just, I realized how silly it was of me, to hold on to that just because it happened to me once. It was so long ago, and obviously I know you would never do that to me. Wouldn't...leave me, I mean."

"I wouldn't. But that doesn't mean we have to do it. Just because you trust me doesn't mean you feel comfortable with that."

"That's what I mean though. I've been holding on to all these things from so long ago, rather than trying to get over them. I mean, look at you and bottoming. You had trauma with that, but you got over it. I can do that, too, surely," he knew his voice was sounding competitive again, as if whoever managed to work past the most sexual traumas won a prize, but he couldn't help it. "I was nineteen. I don't have to be that person for the rest of my life. I'm not that person. I don't have to live like I am."

Erik smiled down at him, letting the other customers weave their way around them, leaned down and kissed him, and then murmured against his cheek.

"I love you."

Same as always, it sent a shiver up Charles' spine, to hear those words, scarcely a week old. He wrapped his arm around Erik's slim waist, pressed forward, burying his face in the taller man's collar, breathing in the sweet scent of him.

"Ich liebe dich auch."

One of the stands was the Jewish bakery from uptown, and the ancient gentleman that ran their stall loved sharing Hebrew with Erik, and while Charles normally stood beside him in order to mentally jerk off to the sound of Erik's Hebrew, today he snuck away. While the man was distracted with language exchanges, Charles ran back to the flower stall, trying to pick out the perfect bunch before Erik came looking for him.

When the hand closed around his elbow he was actually confused, he didn't think for a moment that it was Erik—it was too rough. Before he could turn to see who it was, that voice was hissing into the space behind his ear. Erik liked to kiss that space-liked to kiss a lot of spaces on him, but that was certainly a favorite-and he shuddered for a moment to have those lips brushing against him there.

"Your office. One hour. Leave the kike at home. Stand me up and I'll see to him personally."

He was shocked still for an instant after the hand released him, and when he turned he couldn't make out where Tom could be in the populous crush of people, hardly had time to look when he felt Erik's hand brushing his shoulder gently, a far cry from Tom's bruising grasp.

"Hey, I was looking for you," Erik complained. Charles made sure his face was presentable, nothing worrisome, before he turned into the grasp, beaming up as usual at his gorgeous boyfriend.

"I was going to get you some flowers. But then I couldn't figure out which ones you'd like best," he lied. Of course he could work out which ones Erik would like best: the man had a Victorian mindset when it came to flowers so he only had to choose the ones with the most romantic of flower meanings.

Erik bought it, or pretended to buy it, it was hard to tell. He grinned back, slipping his arms around Charles' waist.

"Aw, Geliebter, who needs flowers when I have the world's sunniest sunflower?" the man teased in mockingly saccharine tones, kissing him on just the tip of his nose. He tried for and got a real kiss, trying to work out how the next hour would go, and what he would do once it was up. The pit in his stomach was roiling, begging to expand into the sort of wrath Erik would be proud of. He seriously took it under consideration.

No one scratched his boyfriend, shoved him out of a car and called him a kike, threatened him. Maybe he'd forgiven Tom for what he'd done ten years ago, but the bastard was damn well going to pay for what he had done ten hours ago, ten minutes ago.