A/N: Before I began I wanted to go over a difference in syntax regarding the term 'sequel'. I don't REALLY consider this a sequel to Fools Rush In since it doesn't pick up the mood of where FRI left off (namely, Tom). This story will not deal with the Tom issue in the slightest, so please, be warned.
On a lighter note, thanks you so much Samantha for beta'ing it up with me! I really appreciate it! Now, on to the fluff!
Charles ordered him some kosher fare, and got in on it himself ("to practice"), and when Erik had sucked it all down in record time he went immediately back to sleep.
His body woke him up a few hours later and the cabin was dark for sleep but Charles had the light on and was still reading (annoying the Homophobe Toad-good jobs old boy), tossing around in his chair-a kick must have landed, or maybe the man's persistent fidgeting had jolted him awake.
"What's wrong?" he mumbled, reaching out a hand to stroke Charles' hair back. Homophobe Toad turned in her seat as if his soft questioning had woken her. He bared his teeth at her and she hid behind her pillow.
"I can't sleep," Charles sighed, leaning into his touch petulantly. "I hate sitting still like this for so long, so inactive..."
Erik laughed at him. "You're a scientist: ninety percent of your job is done sitting down."
"At least that's mentally stimulating. This is miserable."
Erik quirked his brow at the younger man. This sort of talk wasn't like him: normally everything was sunshine and roses.
He sighed and sat up straighter to shake the sleep from him but Charles put a staying hand on his shoulder.
"No, don't," he pleaded. "Maybe I just need to get settled."
The brunet climbed out of his seat and fit himself into Erik's, cuddling up to his chest. Erik smiled and put his arms around the smaller man, breathing in the soft clean scent from his clipped hair.
"What are we going to do in Germany, liebling? Sleeping arrangements might not be so comfortable."
Charles rolled up onto one shoulder and whispered, "You think fitting two grown men into one first class seat is comfortable? You really must love me." Then he leaned forward and kissed him soundly on the mouth, brushing his tongue against his lips until Erik allowed him to deepen the kiss.
"Hem hem," they heard, loud and clear.
Erik unbuckled his seat belt and was all for ripping it from the chair to beat the woman with it but Charles stopped him, plying him with cuddling.
When that didn't quite cover it he tried to add conversation to the distraction.
"Darling, I forgot: what did you have to wake Logan up to talk about this morning?"
Erik swore under his breath. He had been hoping the other man wouldn't have noticed that, or at least that he would chalk it up to random discussion rather than anything serious enough to be asked about afterwards.
"Oh, just about the apartment while we're gone. Just to check on Raven or...stuff," he lied uneasily. He was much better at lying to people who were not Charles. Luckily, Charles refused to believe that a lie would ever leave his mouth, so he didn't have to be particularly good at it to fool the trusting brunet.
"That is so sweet of you," said man murmured, kissing Erik single-mindedly.
They dutifully ignored Homophobe Toad's hemming.
When Charles was snuggled up sweetly to his chest again Erik relaxed back and thought hard about if Charles had really been convinced by his lie, or was only pretending to be convinced to keep Erik off his guard and thus more easily find out his lie.
To think that he had used to imagine manipulation beyond the scope of his sweet little Helligkeit. Those were the days.
Erik wished they would hurry up and arrive in Heidelberg so he could force his mother to give him advice. It was ridiculous. Normally she loved giving him advice-for everything from what coffee brand to serve at the cafe to whether or not he should list Charles as his emergency contact. So how was it that he was approaching the biggest gauntlet of his life so far with nothing but a paltry "No, kleiner, it should come from you."? It was absolutely insane.
But what could he do over Skype? The more he pushed her to goddamn give him some pristine motherly advice already, the more she feigned technical difficulties ("What's that, kleiner? I'm sorry, I think your microphone is perhaps broken. I will talk to you next week, Schatzi. Ich liebe dich.") When he arrived in Heidelberg, all of that would change. She couldn't escape her motherly duties forever. Eventually, she would have to pick out all the perfect words that would make it impossible for Charles to refuse to move in with him.
Really, Erik wouldn't have worried about the situation at all if it were just the two of them: he loved Charles and Charles loved him back and they had been dating for over a year now and they got along marvelously even now that he did not suspect Charles of being the love child of Christ and Ghandi, and even though Charles now knew that he himself was actually a pretty cynical man who really did believe that a large portion of the world's population was beyond rehabilitation to the point that they should be destroyed (it had literally taken Charles six months to wrap his head around that belief, and Erik suspected that the man had not entirely given up on changing Erik's mind about it). When all these elements aligned, you moved in together. Erik had visited enough dating forums, augmented with extensive Yahoo!Answers research, to figure that out.
The problem, of course, was Raven.
You would think that a twenty-two year old girl would get fucking tired of living with her dotty old brother with extensive visiting by his caustic boyfriend, but she apparently couldn't get enough of it. Not that Erik had been dumb enough to ask her if it would be okay to steal her brother from her, but the signs towards the negative were all ridiculously obvious even without him flat-out asking.
This trip was only the most recent of examples. The thing was kind of a surprise, he granted: he had informed his mother months ago that he and Charles had exchanged their first 'I love you's and she had wept and absolutely demanded that she get to meet Charles. Erik had appeased her over Skype, something Charles had been whining for for absolute months. When he told his mother he wanted Charles to move in with him, she had turned down his requests for advice and absolutely commanded that he bring this man to Germany to meet his mother for Hanukkah.
That had been in November and he thought that Charles was going to jump right out of his skin for joy at the news, before he started sprinting wildly around the house trying to find his German phrasebook and his copy of What to do When You're Dating a Jew so that he could dust off his Hanukkah customs.
Then they had sat down at the calendar and Charles had realized that Hanukkah that year landed long before winter vacation, and he spent the next three days convincing the university to let him skive off.
Only then had they remembered Raven.
Only then had Erik been subjugated to furious, shrieking wails from the young girl, accompanied by long diatribes from his boyfriend about how they had never been apart for the holidays (except that one time-Raven-Wiccan friends-Charles wasn't invited) and did he think maybe they could bring her along?
Erik covered up his selfish wish to share his boyfriend solely with his mother, to experience Germany (Charles' first time, for all his extensive travelling) alone together, with hard-boiled facts.
"We're staying at my mother's: there's barely room for the two of us."
Raven had countered by insisting she could stay at a nearby hotel.
He had argued that it would be all Charles hanging out with his mother and bonding, not something he wanted Raven to infringe upon.
"I can leave them alone together!" Raven argued. "I leave him alone with you all the time!" Erik could argue that easily: she didn't leave them alone, ever. Their one respite was running away to Erik's house, and even then she felt it her right to call Charles at any time of day or night, and for stupid shit, too, like clothing choices or picking the right word for her essay or where were the tea cakes he had bought the other day? Erik had been interrupted in the middle of the funnest stuff more times than he could count or would care to remember.
Not this time.
She had gone about wiggling her way out of schoolwork for the whole three weeks they'd be gone, which included the final days of classes, all of Study Week, and the beginning of Finals Week, and it was it was only when Raven's environmental sciences' professor refused to defer her final, set at the beginning of the week, that she had had to give up the ghost. Erik had had to pay the man a hefty fee for it, and agree to keep Charles and his persuasive ways far away from the poor guy. Raven had fallen immediately into bitter cursing, and then a full-fledged temper-tantrum.
"He'll be back by New Years, what's your fucking problem?" Erik had snarled over her wailing.
His response was Raven coming after him with her science textbook and threatening him with a concussion.
Really, could anyone blame him for wanting a nice place to keep Charles that was not anywhere around her antics? What was so very selfish about wanting his boyfriend to himself, or at least setting up a fifteen-minute boundary between the man and his eccentric sister?
It wasn't that he didn't like Raven-most of the time they got along very well: they were both sinister and cynical and it was a great enjoyment to meet eyes over Charles' naive little head and roll them in unison. But that did not mean that he liked hanging out with her more than he liked hanging out (or doing more than just hanging out) with his boyfriend. Sometimes you just needed fucking alone time, and so long as Raven did not understand what that meant it would be impossible to have Charles to himself but at the same time have Charles and Raven living together.
And, really, what was so bad about Charles and Raven not living together anymore? They had been living together their whole fucking lives, or at least since Raven was adopted. No twenty-nine year-old man should still be living with his twenty-two year-old sister. It just wasn't right. And they should be able to keep away from each other for the three fucking weeks it would take for Charles to meet his mother and celebrate Hanukkah along with some cheerful holiday backpacking.
"What's wrong?" Charles questioned beside him, dragging him back into the present with one innocuous sentence.
"Huh? Nothing," he coughed nervously.
"You're all tense," Charles pointed out. Erik forced all his muscles to relax dictatorially.
Charles eyed him carefully, but then laid back, jangling his foot as he always did when he wanted to get up and be active but wasn't allowed to.
"Go to sleep, Geliebter," Erik suggested, and Charles sighed heavily and changed the subject.
"What will you call me in Germany? Everyone will know what you're saying to me," he pointed out.
Erik shrugged. "I don't mind. It's no secret," and then he smiled and twisted to kiss over Charles face, continuing "Lovely one, brightness, beloved, little mouse..."
"Hem hem!" started up the lumpy woman again.
Erik sighed dramatically into Charles' hair and the smaller man reached up to caress his face.
"Maybe I'll ask Diana if she can have the woman kicked out?"
"It'll be a good test of how persuasive you can be," Erik chuckled, and lay back for Charles to press the call button and give his all.