A/N: Aw crap y'all! We're quickly approaching the end of what I have written to this point! It's tough: I'm working on a few other stories at the same time and so yeah…I'm sorry if updates start getting slow! Thanks to Auri for fixing my German (the parts I've gotten around to fixing up to this point—yikes!)! And thanks to all of you, of course, for reading and tolerating these slower updates I hope the uberfluff is mostly worth it!

Erik put off his mother's concern by lying to her in order to not humiliate his boyfriend: he said that Raven had called Charles and they'd gotten into a fight. His mother spent the rest of the night up until her present-opening railing against a girl heartless enough to bring dear sweet Charles to tears-and during Hanukkah, too! After her present she was too busy crying to think much about Raven.

She made him and Charles sit right up on either side of her and walk her through every single photo of her new cookbook, ignoring the captions in order to hear the recap in person.

Charles had set the book into five sections: breakfast, carnivorous, vegetarian, sweets, breads, and drinks, and had made Erik help him cook one recipe from each section. The first page was a picture of them before any disasters had occurred: pristine in the matching aprons Moira had gotten them for Christmas (red and white checked with hearts and frilly lace-this was the only time Erik had ever worn his and was overjoyed when by time they got to desserts he had managed to set it on fire) and grinning at the camera because they had yet to figure out what kind of trouble Charles had set them up for.

They had been under the woeful misapprehension until then that having Charles in the kitchen with him would prevent Erik from being too destructive. They now knew better. By the time they hit the vegetarian section the fire department was already begging Charles to save them the time and expense and simply ban Erik from the kitchen. The Brit got drunk with the fire chief and agreed to keep Erik away from the oven in exchange for a worn-out uniform and dented helmet. It had taken them two days to drag themselves out of the bedroom long enough to finish the cookbook.

But Edie didn't need to know that.

She saw the pictures of them posing with a good-spirited fire-fighter next to the scorch mark on Charles' oven wall, and of Erik wielding the fire-extinguisher spitefully while Raven panicked with 911 on speed-dial in the background. There were pictures of Erik regaled to vegetable slicer after that, and the many band-aids that in turn required.

On the last page was Erik with his fire-helmet and charred apron, along with an exhausted-looking Charles, and a note Charles had painstakingly written out in German.

I hope you enjoyed our cooking lessons. The most important lesson I learned was to keep Erik out of the kitchen. I don't know how his home ec teacher survived, or the school for that matter. I'm very excited to visit you in December, and I know I'll love it and love you. I hope this book finds you very well, and that it makes you smile rather than fear for our lives. Thank you very much for giving birth to the love of my life.

Yours,

Charles

Edie smiled past all her crying and wrapped Charles up in a hug that he suffered through stiffly, glancing at Erik nervously. He pet the Brit's shoulders consolingly, willing him to calm the fuck down. It was only a hug. He could pretend to like a hug from his mother.

This put him on the track of trying to figure out what he was going to say to the man that was somehow going to make him feel well enough to stop acting like a spazz around Edie. He, of course, didn't come up with anything, and secretly hoped his mother never went to sleep so he wouldn't have to have this conversation.

But of course his mother had to sleep. And of course he had to do his boyfriendly duty and help his man out of this tearful, emotional mess. He reminded himself that, awkward as tearful conversations were, he'd rather deal with them when they showed up than have the sort of relationship where Charles felt he couldn't share, couldn't cry, and couldn't depend on him in hard times.

So when Edie was safely ensconced in her room Erik swallowed down his aversion and tiptoed silently into Charles' bed.

The man was waiting for him, pressed up on his side against the wall, pulling back the heavy comforters for him. Charles was like a perfect little mini-heater, and that, coupled with the multiple duvets and quilts, made the bed so incredibly cozy that Erik lost his train of thought for a second. He just wrapped his arms around the smaller man and tangled their legs together and breathed in the warm, clean scent of him.

"Sorry I ruined Hanukkah," the man murmured.

"You didn't ruin it, although I feel bad for buying you all those handkerchiefs now."

"Yes, that was rather inappropriate."

"You didn't warn me there would be crying all up and down this trip-I had no idea."

"I didn't know either. I was so looking forward to this whole vacation and now all I want to do is run off to Paris before your mother cottons on to my eccentric behavior."

"Why does she make you so nervous? She already loves you to bits."

Charles shifted awkwardly in his grasp and sighed. "I'm just...it's just...it feels so strange, having her like me. I don't know how to react."

"What, you thought she was going to hate you? You're my boyfriend!"

Charles shrugged and nuzzled in closer. "I don't know," he mumbled. "I thought she'd treat me like...I don't know...Emma."

"Like Emma treats you? You mean barely disguised distaste?"

"Okay, okay, I thought she'd treat me like a waitress treats me: nice enough but not so authentic. I thought she'd like me through you, like with a buffer. Instead I'm getting it all head-on and it's making me spazz out."

Erik chuckled and squeezed the man very tightly. "Oh my poor little Heulsuse! How tough it is to be loved so intensely by so many people!"

The smaller man whined against him, smacking him lightly. "Erik, I'm serious! What am I going to do? If I keep freaking out around her she's going to think I hate her!"

He nodded seriously. This was very true: if Charles kept freezing up in her arms or ducking away from her coddling or hiding behind Erik as a love-buffer this was indeed what Edie was going to think: her son-in-law hated her.

"Here's what we're going to do:" Erik took a deep breath to say. "You're going to fake it."

Charles was silent, pulling back to stare at him in the dark. "Pardon?"

Grinning, Erik continued. "You're just going to put on that happy face you've got set aside for benefit dinners and society brunches and the country-club golf tournament. You faked your way through every sunny conversation with all of those hoity-toity bastards and you're going to fake your way through pretending to not be terrified out of your mind by my four-foot-eleven mom's hugs."

"Har bloody har," Charles growled.

"Really, I don't know how you didn't think of this before. You're notoriously able to fake affection. I'm still not even sure you really love me. Maybe you're just currying free chai-latte-favors out of me."

"Erik, dear, I have a confession to make."

Erik grinned, waiting for what he had so easily set himself up for.

Instead he got: "I've never liked your chai lattes. Not ever."

Erik blinked himself blearily awake and reached for the main thing that made being awake tolerable: his boyfriend. Instead he got an armful of empty bed.

How in the hell had the man managed that? He'd had him squeezed up against the wall for the whole night-how had he managed to slip away without waking him, especially in this squeaky bed?

Sighing vengefully, he rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling until he could keep his eyes open for more than two seconds at a time.

He tried to wrap his head once more around the fact that Charles actually had no interest in the drink that had forged their love affair.

He failed.

"It's too spicy," Charles had confessed to him last night.

"I added sweetener to it!"

"It's still too spicy. It speaks to how much I wanted into your pants that I managed to down so many of them."

Erik grit his teeth and vowed to change chai spice brands. He'd go in for that sissy Oregon chai crap that couldn't put hair on a man's chest with a Locks of Love donation and a hot glue gun. Anything was worth it to regain the drink that had brought him his love, even though said love was now claiming it was his own libido that had actually brought them together.

When he was done swearing his new fealty to crappy sweet chai he rolled out of bed and got dressed for yet another day of sightseeing: a pair of long underwear under his jeans and two sweaters over his long-sleeved shirt.

When he did finally make an appearance it was to giggling.

Frozen in his tracks at the soul-crushing off-ness of this, it took him a second to figure out it was coming from the kitchen, and another full minute to follow up on it, tiptoeing stealthily.

There was more laughter, and he could tell it was his mother, but thought it might be some alien only pretending to be his mother so he kept his stealth skills up until he'd turned the corner enough to peer inside.

He didn't know why he bothered: both Edie and Charles had practically supernatural skills when it came to telling when he was around.

They both looked up at him from cooking breakfast together, beaming.

Charles was wearing his new sweater and a pair of black jeans that Erik had bought him with the hope that he would wear them but certainly not the belief. They looked exactly as he had imagined they would when he snatched them off the shelf at the Gap. Namely: just about painted on.

He swallowed back his rush of saliva and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

"We thought we'd try out the new cookbook for breakfast," Charles explained happily, eyes shining.

"We've been having a wonderful morning!" Edie exclaimed, patting Charles happily. Erik realized her arm was around his waist. "And to imagine I was beginning to think he didn't like me!"

"Everybody likes you, Mama," he assured with a grin, walking over to kiss her cheek.

"Good start," he added to Charles, kissing him a little more intensely.

"She's buying it, then?" the man asked through his smile.

"I had the conversation with you just last night and I'm buying it."

Actually, it was rather disconcerting to watch Charles be this good at lying to someone, even though he wasn't actually lying. He did like Edie and he wasn't pretending to like her: he was just pretending to not be severely freaked out by her liking him. But looking at him sitting there making French toast with his mother, one would have absolutely no idea that the man was probably spazzing like a freakazoid on the inside. He looked perfectly at ease, and perfectly genial, except for the moments where he'd suddenly turn to Erik, eyes wide with fear, before going back to his charade.

Irena showed up as they were setting the table, and made indecent comments about Charles' indecently tight pants. Erik didn't bother to translate, instead grinning as Edie poured Charles' milk (Erik had to pour his own) and hugged him jovially around the shoulders, petting his hair back and keening "Oh my handsome little son-in-law!"

"What is she saying?" Charles questioned, leaning into her embrace as if his mind weren't probably contemplating running from the room in a panic.

Erik wasn't sure what this news would do to his self-control, but he translated anyway, slightly hesitant: "She keeps calling you her son-in-law. I think she's trying to guilt me into proposing to you."

Charles eyed him through his lashes in that unbelievably sultry way he had and said, "Go on, then. Get on your knees."

Erik blushed. "Only one knee is necessary," he reminded.

Charles just smiled: "If you want me to say 'yes' you'd better be on the safe side and start with two."

"Go get your jacket on and I'll blow you at all the major monuments of my hometown, Helligkeit."

"Actually," Charles admitted, finishing off his toast. "I was thinking we could spend today indoors."

Erik practically fell out of his chair he was so shocked.

"You're fucking kidding me!" he balked, blocking his mother's blow for saying 'fucking'. "Yesterday I couldn't drag you home-now you're turning me down on a blow job at the student prison?"

Edie might not know what it meant to 'blow' someone in English, but apparently 'blow job' was similar enough in German for her to figure that out and Erik was stuck brushing the taste of soap out of his mouth for the rest of the morning, glaring at the brunet because it was his fault. Absolutely his fault.

Realizing that Charles was serious about his plans for the day, Erik went back to the bedroom to get out of his jeans and one of his sweaters, fully planning on lounging about the house for the rest of the day in his long johns and hoping that the sight would move Charles to regret turning down an orgasm from him. He could tell immediately by the frustrated glint in the man's eye that that mission was perfectly accomplished.

They hung out watching old home videos that Erik tried to ignore; he translated full conversations between Edie and Charles that were tooth-achingly adorable; and when Edie went to buy groceries so they could bake cookies together, Erik and Charles had a wrestling match to decide who would suck off whom before she got back.

Charles won (or, rather, Charles cheated) and got to do the honors and Erik was still brain-dead and boneless by time his mother got back, cheerful and excited and none the wiser.

He wasn't allowed in the kitchen while they were baking because Edie still believed he was bad luck regarding anything that relied on a modicum of fortuity to produce. He had to sit in the hallway glaring in at them (in so much as he was capable of glaring after getting all moxie sucked out through his cock), translating as needed, although it was mostly worth it since Charles snuck him raw cookie dough, something his mother firmly believed would give him food poisoning. His one regret in life was not being born to a woman who had no fear of raw eggs, and thus let him eat the best parts of cooking. Once cookies went into the oven he had no more interest in them, and this indifference extended to cake and brownies. For his birthday Charles had give him raw cake batter with a floating candle. It was the best birthday of his life. (It helped that Charles didn't discriminate against frosting in the bedroom).

His affectionate glance must have not gone unnoticed because his mother came close enough to hiss at him: "Frag ihn!"

Charles looked up from his cookie-cutting innocently.

"Ask me what?"

Erik glared at his mother hard. He had warned her that the man wasn't beyond spontaneously picking up German if it would help him get to the bottom of secrets.

Edie didn't look ashamed though, she looked adoring. She wrapped her arms around Charles' shoulders as he sat, leaning her head against his affectionately.

"Oh my smart little Spatzi!" she crooned, rocking him. Then she turned to Erik, grinning over Charles' skull. "When he lives with you you can really teach him German! Then we can speak German together all the time!"

"Eriiik," Charles sing-songed. "Ask me what?"

"Fine: Charles, will you have my babies?"

The other man sniggered, glaring at him playfully. "That's not what she told you to ask me."

"Still, I don't think I'm that far off."