Erik jangled his leg, checking his watch again as he kicked Raven's ass at Call of Duty.
"He'll be ready when he's ready. Stop checking your watch like a creep."
"What's that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of you dying," he replied, shooting her in the head.
"Fucking A!" she shouted, hitting him with her controller. Since he couldn't shoot Raven in real life he had gotten very much into playing murderous video games with her, and discovered he had quite a knack for it.
"I never should have let Sean bring this over," the blonde growled.
Erik would have agreed, but Charles made an appearance then, looking sharp in black slacks and a dark turtleneck.
He jumped up immediately, throwing his controller at Raven and hoping it hit her before wrapping Charles up in his arms.
"You look amazing," he growled, dragging the brunet close and kissing him breathless.
"Stop it, I'm going to throw up," Raven gagged. Both men had gotten very adept at ignoring her by now, and did so now with practiced ease.
"You think so? It took me forever to find something that would cover up all the—well, you know," Charles laughed, touching his throat and eyeing Raven.
Erik knew very well. It had taken him half the night to mark up Charles' neck and he had enjoyed every moment of it.
Charles' biology final had come and gone, which proved to be the easy part. Grading all those finals was more challenging. As it was Charles had read so many variations of the same essay that he had started grading them in his sleep, giving Erik the groggy rundown of why he was getting a seven instead of a ten.
Erik took his boyfriendly duties very much to heart and did his best to fuck Charles into such a stupor that he couldn't speak when awake, much less in his sleep. It seemed to be working: Erik hadn't heard a peep out of the man all last night, and if love-bites were what it took to give him a full night's rest with no midnight lectures on cellular regrowth in paralytic patients then so be it.
"I'm not twelve," Raven whined. "So he bit your neck to smithereens. You don't have to shy away from it around me."
"Marking my neck up you're suddenly adult about, but kissing in the living room is enough to make you bulimic," Charles pointed out argumentatively. Raven pretended she couldn't hear him.
"Well, let's head out," Erik proposed, and then turned to Raven. "You still coming for drinks?"
"I'll be there. I want to meet this Emma character," she snarled.
Erik was excited for this event too. Emma had been a pain in his ass about Charles for the past two weeks and it was getting very old very fast. He wanted nothing more than to get Raven drunk enough for a catfight. In a verbal spar no one could counter the classy woman, but he was hoping that when it came to fisticuffs Raven would be able to hold her own. If not, Erik wasn't sure that Charles' chivalry extended to women who were beating up on his little sister.
"Now, now," Charles chided. "This is my first time meeting Emma since dating Erik and you are not going to ruin it by being uncouth and bringing up the fact that she's less that excited about me."
"Oh aren't I?" Raven sneered.
They had been arguing this back and forth since Erik and Armando had hammered out the dinner plans: dinner for all the café people Armando knew (and Charles, since he was an adopted café person), and then drinks for whoever else wanted in on the fun, including Raven, Emma, Logan, and rest of the café crew. Charles and Raven had yet to come to an agreement about what Raven's behavior would be like when they started drinking. Erik did not think they would be able to figure it out in the five minutes till the dinner started, so he stopped it abruptly by pushing Charles out the door and pulling their coats on them.
The restaurant was the German place up the road where he and Raven had made amends. He felt not the slightest bit badly about using Armando's visit as an excuse to introduce Charles to fine German fare.
"I do hope Emma and Raven manage to get along," Charles worried.
"I never should have told her Emma didn't like you," Erik said, not actually sorry at all since he had told her expressly to get her riled up enough for a fistfight.
"I didn't think she'd take it so much to heart! I mean, it's impossible for everyone to like me."
Erik didn't think it was that much of a stretch. He put his arm around Charles' waist and kissed his hair. "You have to admit that it's certainly an anomaly," he pointed out.
"Well she hardly knows me. I've only spoken to the woman once, and for barely fifteen minutes! That's not quite enough time for my charm to set in," Charles teased, holding Erik back.
"I don't know: it took a lot less time than that with me."
The brunet smiled up at him, blue eyes clear and bright under the street-lights.
"Well, you're a quick study, my friend."
The kids were already crammed into Madchen's, but they had smartly left two places open next to Armando at the head of the table for Erik and Charles. Erik didn't think he was imagining things when he noticed their welcome of Charles was just as warm (maybe even more so) as their welcome of their boss.
Alex and Sean sat across from Erik and his date, bad luck but not surprising since they were Armando's particular friends. Hank was next, and Erik was happy the lanky boy was in an awkward position to take up all of Charles' time as he was normally wont to do. Beside Charles sat Azazel, which was good since he and Charles seemed to be such bosom buddies. If Erik didn't know any better he would accuse his boyfriend of cultivating the soft-speaking man in order to get into Emma's good graces. But of course Charles' mind just didn't work that way.
As they sat down Erik introduced Charles to Armando warmly and took the smaller man's jacket to hang over the back of his chair.
Armando stared outright.
"Did you get a head injury since I left?" the dusky man asked, shocked.
"Worse," Alex laughed. "He got a boyfriend."
Armando shifted to stare at Charles.
"Are you a wizard?"
"Yeah," Sean piped in crudely. "And he keeps his wand down his pants."
Erik aimed a kick at him under the table and judging by the sizeable yelp he had connected excellently.
"I'm sorry I keep staring—I'm not used to meeting his boyfriends while he's still dating them," Armando pointed out.
"Does he normally hide us away once he decides to date us?" Charles questioned and Erik shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
"No, normally we don't hear about them till their ex-boyfriends," Armando laughed.
Erik stopped this discussion by calling the waitress over and getting the process of ordering food going. He didn't need a menu he had been here so many times and he had already chosen what he would force Charles to have as his first-time foray into German food.
Azazel took over Charles' attention after that and Erik caught up with what Armando had been doing for the last few months in the Galapagos, which unfortunately meant having a conversation with Alex and Sean as well. He was convinced the boys' IQs nosedived around one another.
Armando quickly turned the questions away from his studies though and towards the enigma of the hour.
"How long have you two been dating?" he whispered to Erik.
"I don't know," Erik lied with a nonchalant shrug. "A month I guess."
"Is he okay?" Armando asked next, but he was asking Sean and Alex. Both of them nodded ecstatically, whether because Erik was sitting right there and would embalm them for anything less or because they were actually that enthused with Charles he wasn't entirely sure. Probably it was a little of both.
"He's great," Sean said, a little over-loud. "Nothing like Nay."
"Who's Nay?" Charles asked, so good at picking up on conversations Erik didn't want to have.
"Nathan Mor," Alex explained, grinning like a loon at putting Erik in this position.
"He didn't tell you about Nay?" Armando laughed. "Goes to show a leopard can't change his spots I guess."
"I was going to tell you," Erik pointed out. Charles just squinted at him meanly.
"Well, you can tell me now."
"He was this guy I used to date. Before you, I mean. Long before you."
"He was a swimmer," Sean added.
"Why did you break up with him again, Mr. Lensherr?" Armando prompted and Erik sighed but responded, picking at the table's wood grain as he did so.
"He smelt like chlorine all the time," he muttered.
When everyone laughed, his face turned red and he felt goaded into explaining the hilarity out of the situation.
"He made all my clothes stink! I was doing laundry like all the fucking time!"
"Gunther Bain is still my absolute favorite—were you guys around for Gunther?" Armando asked the other two. They shook their heads bashfully. By now the whole table was in on it, and Armando turned to Az next. "You were there, weren't you?"
"Gunther? Yes, I was there. I had to go with Emma to the police station to press charges," he said quietly. Erik dropped his head into his palm and tried to shrink up in his chair.
"What?" Charles shouted. "What are you talking about?"
"Erik hasn't told you about this?"
"Erik doesn't tell me anything," Charles growled.
"We got in a fistfight and Emma tried to get him arrested," Erik said in one frustrated rush. "Really, there's nothing to tell!"
"The guy was a pro wrestler," Armando informed everyone, and when they all demanded the story from the beginning he accepted with relish.
"One day Erik comes in with a black eye—okay, we figure someone finally put him in his place for being such a bastard. Not too shocking. Run of the mill conversation: 'What happened Erik?' 'Nothing' 'Well, something happened to you, you've got a black eye' 'I have a new boyfriend' 'And he's a wife-beater?' 'We got into a fight'. Well that was all Az needed to hear to tell Emma, and that was all Emma needed to hear to go straight to the police."
"Unfortunately Erik was a true battered wife and refused to press charges," Az sighed.
"It was a fist-fight," Erik defended. "I dealt out just as much as I took in. I would have been just as much in jail."
"I don't see how," Armando said dubiously. "We saw the guy later on TV and he had to be—what? Three hundred pounds? Two-fifty? At least 6'5"—right?"
Az nodded solemly. Chares was staring at him with fright.
"He hit you?" he choked.
Erik shrugged. This was not as melodramatic as everyone was making it out to be, but Charles was not going to give up on the subject of someone hitting him until it all came out. "I laughed at him and he punched me. I punched him back, we brawled for a while. The end."
"Punching is not a proper response to laughing," Charles argued.
Erik smiled at the memory and Hank seemed adept enough to pick up on it.
"Why did you laugh at him?" he asked as if wary of the answer.
Erik smiled more broadly—he couldn't help it. It was funny.
"He orgasmed like a woman." When he was met with blank stares he explained further. "I mean he sounded just like a woman. Or maybe not a woman, maybe like a girl—or a dog."
"Good thing Angel's not here to hear this," Sean murmured.
Charles was still looking at him like he was a completely new person and Erik tried to amend this by setting the younger man at ease.
"They're exaggerating: he was two-fifty tops and definitely wasn't more than like 6'2" or so."
"His size is not the part of this conversation I'm taking issue with," Charles growled.
"I'm not exaggerating—are you exaggerating Azazel?" Armando questioned. The quiet man shook his head.
"He was built like an absolute fridge."
Erik glared between the both of them. "Well I learned my lesson: I never dated a single person after that I didn't think I could take in a fight."
Charles dropped his head into his hand and shook it wearily, thoroughly unnerving Erik.
"You guys are being awful," he complained. "This is supposed to be a fun dinner about Armando—not a foray into my entire dating history."
"Dating catastrophe, more like," Az corrected.
"Change the goddamn subject before I fire the lot of you," Erik threatened in a snarl, clutching his silverware knife antagonistically, and even though it was dull they all took his advice.
"How bout that finals week, huh?" Alex shouted quickly, and they all tripped over themselves to discuss business, apart from Azazel who was completely unflappable and Charles who was not so easily intimidated.
"You should have told me that, you know," he said to Erik flatly.
Erik couldn't meet his eye so he picked at his cuffs uneasily.
"I know."
"But I'm not angry with you," the brunet sighed, and Erik jerked up with the surprise. The man looked worse than angry—he looked resigned. Maybe even disappointed. "I can't control when you choose to tell me things. You'll tell me when you're ready."
Erik felt miserable. He reached slightly to hold Charles' hand. "I didn't not tell you because I wasn't ready to tell you—it's just that I never think about them. Certainly not around you. They just weren't important to me."
Charles just patted his hand. He didn't believe him. Damn it. How to get the maximum amount of credibility with the minimum amount of time? He growled and pulled on Charles' arm until the other man finally looked him in the eye where he could pin him with a stare.
"I dated three men before you, four if you count Mort, and I don't, and I dated more women than that, and I don't think about a single solitary one of them when I'm with you, besides maybe Magda and I already told you about her. I only think of you, do you understand? The only reason I never mentioned them was because they never crossed my mind. The only reason."
Charles stared at him for another few seconds and then slowly smiled.
"Everyone's staring at us."
Erik blinked back, glancing around the table where, sure enough, all eyes were on them.
"What the fuck are you looking at? Get back to work!" Erik growled, since it was his go-to phrase normally.
"But we're not at work," Sean keened, glancing around nervously as if searching for some work that he could do just so he wouldn't be accused of not following orders.
The rest of them laughed and Charles tugged himself free of Erik's grasp, but he didn't look angry. Indeed, he leaned over enough to kiss Erik just at his jaw.
"We're continuing this subject at home, darling," he murmured into Erik's ear and the taller man knew that there would be no putting it off any further. He sighed miserably but nodded.
Other than that, dinner was great fun, even for someone as anti-social as Erik. It helped that he was being social with people he knew and mostly liked as opposed to the rest of humanity, which he hated as a starting point. Still, he wasn't sad when they had to get up to move to the bar. He had every hope of witnessing an epic catfight there, after all.