Erik and Charles

I mentally sigh. He is inviting me after all, asking me without words like that. And he issoinviting.

"Mind if I?..." I raise my hand in a gesture towards my left temple, watching his eyes the whole time. They widen slightly as he takes in my meaning then he nods briefly and adds a throaty "go ahead."

There is so much emotion roiling at the top of his mind. Anger and rage, undirected and fading now as he lets it go; resignation and disappointment that he isn't as strong as he wants to be; fear of losing control of his strength, fear of losing control over his own life, and fear of... of disappointing me! That one is a surprise. There is more near the surface, but I try to ignore it and push on down to his memories, searching for a particular one that will let him tap into deeper emotions. The desire bubbling just under his surface pushes to the forefront and guides me into a memory without me willing it: Erik making love to... my sister! Erik watches Raven's form change spasmodically in the throes of her orgasm, and I watch in amazement as Erik calls out my name while he comes.

I shove that memory back down and look for a less distracting one, a memory that can help Erik harness his power. And there, I find it, and pull it up to the surface where Erik can see it too. I am not sure which birthday it was, but some few candles are upon a cake, the number of candles wavering in young Erik's eyes as water fills them. His mother smiles at him and at Erik's father, and Erik knows how hard both his parents must have worked to find the candles, to save the flour, to save the eggs, the butter, the sugar.

I step back from the memory, letting Erik re-experience it on his own. I drop my fingers from my temple, such a silly device to help me focus my power on delicate tasks, but I do not pull back from his surface mind entirely. His stormy gray eyes are red and stare off to somewhenthat I am not. The tears begin to spill over from his memory into the present day as Erik slowly comes back to me.

"I didn't know I still had that memory," he whispers hoarsely, still not quite looking at me even now.

"There's so much more to you than you know, not just pain and anger." My own voice is soft, trying to reach deep into those hurt places that he doesn't want anyone else to know about, but which he cannot hide from me. I blink my eyes against my own tears and swallow. "There's good in you too. When you can harness all that, you will possess a power that no one can match. Not even me."

Erik finally looks into my eyes then, his gray eyes searching for something in mine. I do not know what he sees, but he glances at my left temple, where I always make that damned gesture when needing to focus, and I nod slightly and place my fingers there again to make it explicit that I'm still touching his mind. I feel his thoughts touch briefly on my final "not even me," but he chooses to place it aside for now rather than take issue with it at this time. Erik turns towards the field and the radio dish again, raises a single hand, and we hear the grinding of the gears as it slowly turns towards us. Erik looks at me and smiles, and I can feel his triumph and joy at his power, and at his control over his power. As he grins at me, I wiggle my fingers slightly to signal my intent, and let a bit of my own pride at his achievement gently leak into him. Erik's grin becomes wider still with the positive feedback, and he rushes up and gives me a big bear hug, and I of course lower my arm to reciprocate.

I don't know whether the desire begins to leak in from him or from me, but as we hold each other close we turn our heads towards each other and I can feel our lips slowly, inexorably, drawing together. Certainly the desire has been simmering under the surface for both of us, Erik's linked to that damned memory of his (calling outmyname!), mine drawing me back to that tempestuous night where he thought he dominated me. As that memory flits through my mind, my control must not have been as tight as I thought, for I feel something in Erik's mind shift and he pulls back from me. In his head I hear myself saying again"you will possess a power that no one can match; not even me."

Aloud he says, "You let me."

I freeze. I am unable to move, my heart in my throat. I am too stunned to even read what is in his mind. Erik pulls fully out of my embrace and continues.

"That night we were... together. I thought," he pauses, clears his throat. His eyes cannot meet mine, and that is probably good because I know that if he looked into mine he would see everything inside me, and even I do not know what is there right now. He paces a few steps away from me, and a couple back. "I thought I was raping you," he says softly. And then he does look up at me, and I am reminded that our minds are still connected as the hurt inside him begins to flood upwards. "And all the time you werelettingme think that!" He looks down then back up at me, takes another step away, and I can feel that he is about to run.

"Wait!" I interrupt him. I reach my hand out towards him, I don't need to touch my temple for this, and I gently urge him mentally to comply. Not forcing, asking. Erik feels my request, and decides to do as I ask. His stance slumps and he waits, not looking at me. I cannot trust my voice. I don't even know what I would say."Look at me?"I ask him mentally. After a moment he does so, turning first his body back towards me, then his head, and then finally raising his red-rimmed eyes to meet mine. There are a full three meters between us. I don't even need the link between us to feel his pain again, his sense of betrayal. (He thought he raped me, why shouldhefeel betrayed? Because his assumed rape was honest while my silent acquiescence was not? Or because I snooped on his sensations and fed him mine without him understanding?) I still don't know what to say to him as he looks at me, so I slowly bring two fingers to my temple and raise an eyebrow in question. After a long moment, a silent moment that stretches out forever, Erik finally nods slowly, a very tiny nod.

And I very slowly, small bit by small bit, open myself up to Erik, showing him first what I know of him.

When we first met that day out in the bay, I scanned him thoroughly and deeply. I do this to every new person I meet. It is another instinctual thing that I do, and would not stop even if I could. I need to know what sort of person they are, if they are a threat to me or mine, if they can be of use to me, if they are worth my spending time on. Erik was fascinating, there were such depths of pain and anger that I had never seen in someone before. He was on a worldwide quest of revenge, killing everyone who had ever hurt him in any way. And yet there was a beautiful part deep inside him that was untouched by it all, that regretted every death he caused, that mourned every missed opportunity that he had bypassed in his fanaticism. He yearned for more power, more strength, so that he could control those around him, but that pure part wanted to test his limits out of sheer intellectual curiosity, and to see how he could prevent the things that happened to him from ever happening to another innocent. In that one brief moment of probe, I saw all of his past, all of his life, and everything that he was. And I also saw everything that he could be, and this application of his power, even more than the power itself, is what drew me towards him. When Erik asked me that night months ago outside Division X what I knew about him and I answered "everything," I was not exaggerating.

And now I let Erik see me.

My own quest for acceptance with every hot young co-ed I met, each one derailed when I found out, as of course I would, that her mental capacities were nowhere near mine. It was not just that they weren't gifted like me, but they just weren't curious, just weren't interested. My quest for power of my own, power to shape the world around me, to make a world that was safe for people like myself and my adoptive sister Raven. My perpetual fear that Raven would let something slip someday and we would be found out and killed by those unwilling to understand. My resulting constant testing of my own boundaries, stretching my strength (my triumph when as a junior I brought the senior prom queen into my bed), stretching my distance (the long slow effort it took to reach minds any further away than the bounds of our property), and improving my finesse (the sudden understanding and breakthrough when I first convinced Raven herself that I was someone else).

Yes, I am certain that I am the most powerful mutant I have ever met, even more powerful than Erik despite the physical manifestation of his powers, likely the most powerful in the world. No, of course Erik didn't, couldn't, do anything to me that I didn't want him to do. And Erik colluded with me in his self-deception; he knew perfectly well the extent of my powers after spending just a little time with me. It's not like I ever hid them from him.

All this Erik sees as I open my mind up to him, and more. As he struggles to absorb it all, I direct my mind, and thus his, to certain things I want him to understand. I show him again my loneliness despite all the women I have seduced with my words and my mind. I show him that I do everything I can to protect my adoptive sister Raven (though not from him, never from him) not only because she is my kin and my kind, but also because I know she is so much weaker than me. I show him my joy at finding him, for the first time in my life meeting someone whose power comes close to equaling my own, and that the same person possesses a strength of mind that does match mine. And I show him what I feel about him. The admiration and the worry that I have for him. The desire to bring him to his full potential. The desire.

I feel it welling up in me again as I open myself up to Erik. I am so wrapped up in our mutual minds that I can barely feel my heart begin to race, and when I do it pulls me back out of my own emotions. I blink my eyes a few times as I realize my breath is coming in short gasps as well, as if I had just run a mile against Hank McCoy. As I focus on Erik's face again, I slowly lower my fingers from my temple and begin to withdraw."No,"I hear Erik say in my receding mind."Please stay."

He reaches his hands out towards me, and the next thing I know I am in his strong arms, his mouth pressed hot and wet against mine. His hands are slipping up my back under my shirt as I tangle mine in his hair. Erik's tongue runs along my teeth, his lips sucking at mine, and I thrust my mind back into his as he thrusts his tongue deeper into my mouth. He groans at my mental penetration, and I would have worried at the intrusion if I didn't feel in his mind and now in mine the desperate desire he harbored to feel us both together as we did that one night before, when we was in denial that it was happening.

I pull back my head to suck in a breath and as I do so I feel him glance around us apprehensively."There's no one nearby right now, they're all on the other side of the grounds, training,"I say into his mind."I will know when they come close, and I will turn their minds away from us. Don't worry, I won't let anything interrupt us."Erik now consciously knows that I am capable of this and his gaze returns to mine. I feel the desire flare up in him again, the outline of his hardening cock pressed against my leg, but this time his desire is untainted by the desperate need for simultaneous acceptance and domination that I felt before. And then our individuality is subsumed as we are lost to the feelings within each others' minds and bodies.

We slowly undress each other, and we are not sure which articles of clothing are removed by Erik's power, and which by Charles' hands, and it does not matter. One of us leans back against the stone railing, hands gripping it tightly, while the other presses his lean body against him. We are not sure which of us kneels on the gravel in front of the other, but the pain in his knees is washed away by the pleasure of a warm mouth engulfing his prick in a single swallow. One of our mouths runs up and down one of our shafts, one hand cupping around our balls, a finger snaking between our legs towards our warm dark opening, and gently pressing to gain access. When our finger slips inside, we gasp at the frisson of pain, and it sends electric pulses to both our nipples. Even so, we use Erik's power to bring a bottle of hand lotion from a bathroom in the mansion, we liberally coat our fingers with it and spread it around the puckered opening before gently teasing a second finger in with the first.

The pleasure is intense as we swirl our tongue around the underside of our penis, along the glans, at the same time gently thrusting fingers in and out of our anus. Our other hand is now liberally coated with lotion and pumps our shaft in time with our fingers working inside. The man standing throws his head back and gasps to express our pleasure; the man kneeling sucks harder on the prick in his mouth. One head glances down and one head up, and our gazes lock together, blue eyes and gray eyes staring into each other, communicating more deeply with eyes and minds than words could ever allow.

The man kneeling rises, running his hands slowly, languorously, up the other man's legs and hips while doing so, and then wrapping his arms around the other's torso. Our lips lock together as our hands run up each others' backs, a hand snaking into the other's hair, and down to each others' buttocks, a finger slipping between his ass cheeks. Our hard cocks grind together, sandwiched between our stomachs, rubbing our shafts together with sweet slick friction, spreading the lotion between us.

We want more, we need more, we need to feel filled, we need to thrust deep into a warm cavity. We both know that we want Charles to take the lead this time, so Erik's body turns to face the stone railing and grips it with both hands. The Charles body slides its prick along Erik's upper thigh, and then between his ass cheeks as Charles holds them together around his shaft. Then with one short jerk back, Charles positions his head at the opening to Erik's anus, then thrusts in quickly. Such completeness, such fullness, is something that we have never felt, even that other night together. Being able to give in, fully and completely, to someone else who is stronger than ourselves, is something that has never happened. The warmth and pressure around our cock is almost too much to bear, and we slowly withdraw it back into the cool summer air, feeling our hands grasping our hips, then plunge it back in to fill up the emptiness inside, our balls slapping against our thighs. The ring of pressure squeezing our cock leaves trails of fire up the shaft, and the head deep inside of us rubs insistently at our prostate. We grasp the stone railing tightly to steady our weakening knees as we pound into our ass from behind. The pleasure is so intense, we cannot hold out much longer, so we squeeze our channel on the shaft of our prick, and suddenly and unexpectedly we climax in a long hard shudder, thrusting deep inside, pulsing over and over again, spurting up onto our belly and the stone still tightly gripped in our hands.

As our cocks slowly soften, we slide down to the ground and rest cradled in each other's arms. I pull my mind just far enough away from Erik's to be certain there is still nobody nearby, briefly worried I might have missed someone in our throes of passion, and we do remain alone and undisturbed. Our knees still hurt from the gravel, and I'm sure that there is a bit of a scrape there, though our minds are not separate enough yet to know whose knees it is. Eventually we rouse ourselves enough to bring our clothes to my room, and there we slip into sleep, our bodies as entwined as our minds are.

*****

The next day we sit together in the library of the mansion on plush upholstered chairs facing each other with a small end table between us. A wood chess set sits on the small table, though we are not currently focused on it. A moment ago I was thinking about Erik bending me forward over the back of my chair, wondering how to position ourselves so that we don't reopen the knee scrapes from the gravel yesterday, but now my attention is fully riveted by what Erik has said he plans for Shaw when we meet him tomorrow off the coast of Cuba.

I look intensely into Erik's eyes, begging and pleading with him to not do this thing, leaning forward in my earnestness. "Listen to me very carefully, my friend." The term is the most I can bring myself to say while Erik is in this mood. And it is more important for him to know he has a friend than a lover. "Killing will not bring you peace."

Erik's gray eyes are cold and distant as he looks back at me. In them I can see nothing of his feelings for me; in fact I am no longer certain that they are there. Does he regret the closeness we shared yesterday, despite the fact that this time it was voluntary on his part? Erik leans back in his chair and tips his head to the side gently, as if baffled by my suggestion to let Shaw live. Softly and oh so coldly he responds, "Peace was never an option."

And with the finality of that statement something inside me falls apart. I know that he will kill Shaw on the morrow. Without even touching his mind now I know this – it was in his mind when we first met, and nothing I have said or done or shared in the past months or weeks or days has changed him enough to make that untrue. And I know that I cannot stay with a man who would decide in cold blood to destroy a life. For a moment, the urge to change his decision is almost more than I can withstand, and I think Erik can see this struggle in my eyes. Or maybe he just knows me well enough now. He watches me, tense, as a caged beast might watch his jailor, and I see muscles ripple in his arms and I feel the hairs on my own arms rise with static electricity. Erik is clearly readying to defend himself should I take any action. I in turn watch him carefully as well, the way that a man watches a tiger that is in no cage at all, fearing that the gun he carries may not actually be enough to stop the wild animal if he chooses to attack.

Suddenly I look down and away, unable to meet his piercing gaze any longer, and the moment passes. I know that things between us will never be the same again. I guess I thought, in my arrogance, that I could change him even without my power. But even with all that we have shared he remains the Erik that I met that first night: trying to stop a submarine with the force of his anger, and willing to drown in the attempt. I turn back towards him, and deliberately put my fingers to my temple as I snake a thought out to him. I cannot say in words what I am feeling, that things cannot be the same between us, that I cannot be with the man that he continues to be, but I show him.

Erik's eyes are empty of everything as they gaze back into mine.

I want to offer him peace. I want to offer to take away his desire to kill.

But instead what I offer to take away isus.