He didn't remember running forward, but he must have because he suddenly found himself chest to chest with the spindly man, shoving him back away from Charles, knocking his hand away, growling, he didn't even know what he was growling.
"Erik-no, no!" Charles was calling, but his voice seemed far off. He could see the white of Richards' eyes, wide with shock. Erik realized he was gripping the guy by the lapels and threw him off.
"Erik, stop!" Charles cried.
"What is this?" Richards demanded, voice high-pitched. "What is he still doing here?"
"Reed," Charles growled warningly, but the man didn't seem to get it.
"I'll make it easy for you," Reed hissed to Erik, grabbing his wallet and shoving forty bucks into Erik's chest. "There-now get the hell out of here!"
"Reed!"
Erik didn't bother trying to talk to the guy, he just pulled back a fist.
Before he could let loose, though, a vice-like grip to the arm was dragging him backwards, and then the same grip was dragging Reed along with him, all the way outside and into the lobby.
"The both of you kindly stop this madness!" Charles hissed at them. "Erik, this is just a huge misunderstanding. Reed, this is my boyfriend, Erik Lensherr!"
Reed's face, red with passion, turned to the color of sour milk and he collapsed back to support himself on the wall.
"Boy-boyfriend?" he squeaked. Erik hadn't relaxed his fists, and still wasn't completely sure he wasn't going to punch the guy.
"What misunderstanding?" he growled.
Charles sighed, massaging his brow, looking for all the world like the before-stage of a migraine commercial.
"It's cleared up now, isn't it, Reed?" he questioned, his voice thin with anger.
The tall man didn't seem capable of speech yet, making choking noises and staring between Charles and Erik.
"Well it isn't cleared up for me," Erik pointed out.
Charles' pity seemed unsure of who it should support. Reed looked more pathetic at this point, apparently, because it finally went to him.
"Reed was just confused. He understands now," Charles assured.
Reed chose this bad time to regain his voice, raising it up defensively.
"He was in your room-dressed like that-looking like that-what was I supposed to think?" he choked.
"I'm sure there were a lot more stops between 'no-idea' and 'call boy,' Reed!" Charles accused.
It was Erik's turn to choke now, although his sputtering in no way impeded the grip of his fists. He was leaning more and more towards punching this guy square in the nose.
"You thought I was a call boy?" he snarled.
"If it makes you feel better," Charles said softly, touching Erik at the small of the back in a way that seemed to remind him that they had been playing at the same thing not too long ago. "He thought you were a very high-end call boy."
"That does not make me feel better," Erik lied, trying to growl, but it was hard to sound too vicious with Charles' hand at his waist.
"I'm so extremely-I'm very-My God, I'm-Jesus-" Reed sputtered, but Erik wasn't sure if the guy was fishing for 'sorry' or 'mortified'. He shunted the blame off himself quickly enough, shaking another finger at Charles. "You didn't tell me you had a boyfriend!"
Erik knocked Reed's hand violently from his man's face. What business was it of this guy? Who the fuck was this guy?
"I'm sorry," Charles said, and Erik wished that he had the ability to take things back on Charles' behalf. Because he should not be sorry-this guy should be sorry.
He couldn't undo Charles words, but he could at least augment them.
"Unless your last name is actually Xavier, Charles doesn't owe you shit, and he certainly doesn't have to update you on his love-life," he growled, with no idea if it was accurate or not, just for the sake of putting the bastard in his place.
"I was here long before you were, buster, and I'll be here long after you're gone!" Reed growled at him, turning his ire away from Charles and onto Erik.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Reed scoffed at him, and Erik stepped forward to punch him, but Charles was dragging down his arm. "You didn't tell him about me?" Reed asked Charles.
"Reed," Charles warned. The taller man brought himself up to full height and smirked down his thin nose at Erik.
"Well, I guess that goes to show how serious he is about you."
Charles was still hanging off his right arm, so Erik struck out with his left, catching the smug man right on the cheekbone and knocking him over easily.
The brunet jumped in front of Erik immediately, shoving him back against the wall in a fit before helping Reed up from his daze on the floor. Erik looked on impassively. The man was a wimp: Erik had barely struck him. There wasn't much strength to his left hook. A stronger man would have swayed maybe, but certainly not fallen. He felt absolutely no remorse, and, surprisingly, Charles seemed to still be on his side.
"I'm sorry, Reed," Charles grit out, pulling the man to his feet. "As much as I abhor violence, you really did deserve that."
Reed was too dazed to speak, which was a good thing. Charles dragged him over in front of Erik and eyed the blonde bitterly with flashing blue eyes.
"Apologize," he demanded. Erik crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at the taller professor.
"No."
"Erik," Charles grit out.
"I'm not sorry I hit him. He shouldn't have said that to me. You said it yourself, he deserved it," Erik argued.
"He did deserve it, but that doesn't mean you should have done it. Apologize."
"I don't hear him apologizing to me."
"Reed," Charles prompted. The man seemed just surprised and out of it enough to do as he was told for once.
"I'm, I'm very sorry, of course," he mumbled. "Shouldn't have said that to you. Of course. Very sorry."
Erik thought it was mostly the shock of getting punched talking-some men were like that. They got hit so infrequently that when they finally did it about scrambled their brains they were so surprised.
"Apparently I shouldn't have hit you," Erik said, because that was not an apology, nor did it exactly state that he believed he shouldn't have hit him.
Charles recognized this, squinting his eyes, but the apology was to Reed, not him, so it didn't matter what he thought of it.
"Shake hands," Charles prompted, and Erik did so eagerly because it was a good way to bruise Reed's hand.
"Ah!" the man gasped before Erik had even heard the first bone pop. These academic types-what weaklings. Academic as Charles was, Erik was sure the man would handle himself more honorably in a fight.
"Reed-go back to the conference. I'll see you later. You," Charles growled to Erik, pointing at him as if Erik didn't know who he was talking to. "Come with me."
So Erik followed Charles dutifully to the hotel entrance, throwing a threatening glance back at Reed for good measure.
Charles stopped just inside the doors, and held Erik's phone out to him without a word and without even looking at him.
"Are you mad at me?" Erik asked, slightly anxious as he switched back phones.
"Yes," Charles said strongly, not bothering to sugar-coat it in the least.
Erik shifted from foot to foot. "Are you...are you going to break up with me?"
That seemed to shock Charles from his cold-shoulder treatment and he glanced up at Erik with wide blue eyes. He looked uncomfortable, and Erik's face fell in advance. His throat closed up but he didn't let anything progress past that, biting on the inside of his mouth and clenching his fists enough to hurt.
"Erik," Charles murmured, putting his arms around his shoulders, pressing his face to Erik's collarbone. "I'm not going to break up with you, Erik."
Erik's sigh was shuddery, and he felt he would collapse if he weren't careful, his legs felt so uneasy.
"But you can't ever do something like that again, Erik. Not ever."
Erik was relieved enough to promise anything, but he thought that Charles really would break up with him if he gave a promise he couldn't keep. So he said, "We'll take it on a case-by-case basis."
Charles eyed him levelly.
"Surely you don't mean I can't punch anyone ever again. Think about self-defense. Think about preemptive strikes. If there's ever a zombie apocalypse I'm going to be punching away like a prize-fighter." Erik stated and Charles laughed outright, which was exactly what he had been aiming for.
He put his arms around Charles' waist and breathed in the scent of his hair. It smelled different; hotel shampoo.
"All right, then," Charles sighed in resignation. "But no more punching my friends."
"He's not your friend," Erik scoffed. "He's a fucking asshole."
"No, he's...Erik, Reed and I used to date."
Erik frowned bitterly. He had suspected, of course, but still.
"But he's such a jerk!"
"He just got carried away."
"But he's so old!"
"He's not that old. He's only fifty-four."
"And you're twenty-eight! He's old enough to be your father!"
"That's always rather been the problem," Charles sighed, and Erik leaned back to eye more information out of the man. This was, after all, the first ex-boyfriend Erik had heard about so far. He wondered if Reed was one of the Two Assholes Raven had told him about. He could certainly believe it.
"When Reed and I dated I was in a really...vulnerable place," Charles continued, spitting the word 'vulnerable' out of his mouth like a bad taste. "I relied on Reed a lot, and he was really good to me. But he never exactly got used to me standing on my own. He's still not used to it. He's very...fatherly. So he really can't help these bouts of protectiveness: saving me from expensive hookers and the like."
Erik laughed. "Yeah well you've got a new boyfriend now, and I might be an expensive hooker, but I can protect you just fine."
"So I've seen," Charles said darkly. "So long as you remember that I don't need protecting I won't have to break up with you, too."
This sounded light enough, but Erik recognized the threat for what it was and shivered accordingly.
"You don't have to break up with me," he assured softly.
"Good," Charles replied, gazing up at him sweetly. "Because, really, I'm incredibly fond of you, darling."
Erik nodded, pleased, and eased down slightly to kiss his boyfriend.
"I'm pretty fond of you, too, Helligkeit," he admitted.
"What does that mean?" Charles leaned back in his arms to murmur.
Erik blinked, realizing that he had accidentally said Helligkeit, 'brightness', instead of Herrlichkeit, 'magnificence'.
But, now that he thought about it, brightness was very apt.
"It means 'light of my life, sunshine in the nighttime, lighthouse unaffected by the storm'," he insisted with all his natural Irish poeticism rolled up into one sentence.
Charles grinned up at him. "German is a lot more concise than I was led to believe."
But the man was blushing through his smile, so Erik could tell he approved.
