Two-thirty in the morning: Once, Charles would never have stayed up so late on a Wednesday night. But that had been before Cairo, before En Sabah Nur and the aborted possession which so often concluded itself in his dreams.
Now, Charles didn't go to bed until he had to. At two-thirty in the morning, he was past the point of diminishing returns when it came to paperwork, but nowhere near the point where exhaustion would grant him an untroubled hour or two of sleep. Brandy kept the demon at bay better than anything else, and so he got up from his desk, poured himself a nightcap, and sank down into his armchair with a heavy sigh.
He'd only taken a few small sips when the window banged open and a wheelchair floated in. Sitting in it was a man Charles recognized at once, though his hair was longer, and his face more gaunt than the last time Charles had encountered him.
"Erik," Charles startled to his feet. A little of the brandy swished over the top of his glass and onto the carpet. "What are you doing here?"
"We've come for sanctuary," Erik said, which was when Charles noticed there was a little girl with him. Perhaps seven or eight years old, she was curled up in his lap with her head on his shoulder, fast asleep.
So Erik had brought him an orphan.
Charles very nearly asked him where her parents were. Then he looked again—the strain on Erik's face, the red around his eyes, the grief and anger that laid at the top of his mind, so much more raw than any Charles had sensed from him before—
But most of all, the tenderness in the way Erik's arm wrapped around the girl's shoulder, holding her close so she wouldn't fall.
"Where's her mother?" he asked instead, and wasn't at all surprised when Erik said:
"Gone."
"Ah," Charles said. "I'm so very sorry."
"That's not possible," Erik said, already planning his departure. It would be easier here that it would have been if he hadn't followed one of the nurses home from the hospital. There, he might have had to fight his way out; here, all he had to do was walk out the door and vanish again into the dark woods.
"For a human man it would not be," Magda said. "But you are him, yes? Erik Lehnsherr?"
"What about it?" He rose from his chair, intending to menace, to threaten, to frighten her enough that she'd wait a few extra minutes before she called the police...
And then his gorge rose, and he sat back down and grabbed for the bedpan, retching into it for the third time since she'd invited him in.
After he'd finished, and was looking at her again through bleary eyes, she said, "I do not know what is possible for you. I do know what I heard."
She was mocking him. She had to be. He hadn't seen her go for the phone, but perhaps she'd spotted him behind her before this. Perhaps she was buying time.
"And what's that?" he asked, listening more for the sound of boots on the front steps than for her answer.
"A heartbeat," she said.
"It's not possible," he said again, though he thought then of Charles, those few fumbling minutes in the plane's small bathroom—and then dismissed him, as he himself had been dismissed. He wouldn't think about Nina's parentage again until shortly after her fifth birthday, when she began to see into the minds of animals in the same way her father saw into the minds of mutant and human alike.
"Do you want to listen?" Magda offered him the stethoscope, but Erik ignored it; he was listening for himself now, looking inward, following the minute traces of iron through his own veins, and through more than his own veins.
"No." He stood up, not even trying for menacing this time. "I'm leaving now."
He got almost half a mile into the woods before turning back. It was the farthest from her he ever got.
Erik had been in the woods for two days when it happened.
He wasn't lost. He knew where he was. The problem was that knowing where he stood in relation to the magnetic poles did not help when he'd misplaced the damned map.
He'd come out somewhere, sooner or later. It wasn't as if he'd become lost across the ocean in North America, in some northern state or province where you could walk in one direction for weeks and meet no one and come across nothing. You could cross Poland in a day by car or train; surely, if you made certain to head north, turning neither to the left nor to the right, you couldn't stay lost in the woods for more than two days.
Still: It had been two days, and he was beginning to become irritated. He'd never chosen to go to ground in the woods if there were any other option. So little metal, so many sounds and flickers of motion at the edge of his eyesight that he couldn't identify the source of; he'd always preferred cities, where there were a thousand weapons to hand at any moment, and where all the enemies were known. Where the footing remained, for the most part, solid, so he wouldn't trip on an unseen branch, catch his foot in some camouflaged hole, and fear for a moment that he'd broken an ankle.
By now, in the warmth of early spring, Erik had long since left his winter coat behind; by now, he'd slept through one bone-juddering night and cursed himself for it.
By now, he'd also become accustomed enough to the strange forest sights and sounds not to flinch when a small bird landed on a low branch, not far from his head.
Then a second bird landed on another branch. Then a third, beside it. Then, suddenly a hundred of them, huddled together on every branch in sight, all seeming to stare at him.
Well, birds flew in flocks. As he'd become accustomed to them, so they'd become accustomed to him. He needed to find a town—any town, not even the one he'd been headed toward when he'd lost the map—more than he needed to concern himself with the strange habits of wild animals, and so Erik paid them no attention other than to note what had happened.
Then a bird landed upon his shoulder. Erik stopped in mid-stride, staring at it. He lifted his hand, thinking to brush it away; but before he could finish reaching for it, there was the aching sound of a hundred wings moving, fifty branches returning to the position they'd been in, and by the time he'd acknowledged the sound, he was covered in birds, head to foot.
They rested on him for a moment, light as a breath across his body. Then they took flight again, landing on branches in trees fifty feet away from him.
The message was clear enough, and so Erik followed. When he came beneath the first branches, the birds flew again, to another set of trees another fifty feet away.
After perhaps half a mile, Erik could make out that he was about to come upon a clearing. And from that clearing came a baby's cries.
By the time Magda climbed in through the window, Erik was already flushed and panting, lying on his back on the bed.
"You came," he said thickly, looking at her almost like he did when he was inside her, about to come.
But only almost, because he'd never smelled like this before. His wristbands were off, and so his scent filled the room and Magda's nostrils. Already, a part of her was hardening between her legs, beginning to spread her folds on its way out.
"I said I would," Magda said, a little embarrassed - he'd never seen her with an erection, no one had - but even more excited, a flame burning hotter with every breath she took.
She peeled off her wristbands, the left and then the right, and barely recognized her own musk. It didn't matter so much a second later, when Erik picked up on it, too, and whimpered.
"Magda," he said, "I need," and it wasn't what he'd needed when he'd fucked her in the backseat of her car, both of them excited to be naked together, and even more so at the taboo.
Erik touched himself between his legs, then drew his hand back up to his stomach. There were toys on the bed, but it was clear he had been waiting for her and hadn't yet used them; Magda placed them on the bedside table, then climbed into bed with him.
Erik's bed was small, a twin, so it would have been a tight fit anyway; but Erik reached for her, wrapping himself around her, and although they'd never done this before in quite this way, it was natural and maddening for her to be between his legs, rubbing her hardness against where he was wet.
There were still layers between them, but for a few minutes Magda couldn't think clearly enough to figure out what to do about that. Her nose was filled with Erik's heat. She hadn't realized, or hadn't believed, how powerful it would be, how it really would eclipse everything else. As private as they both were, the entire school could have been watching, and she wouldn't have cared.
"Please, please," Erik said. Maybe it was the first time he'd said it, or maybe it was the hundredth, but it flipped a switch somewhere, so that nothing was more important than getting rid of the layers.
Together, Magda undoing both their jeans and pushing them down, Erik fumbling to help in-between whimpers and pleases and other little sounds, they managed it. And then her cock was where he could see it, freed from her lips as well as her underwear; and she could see as well as smell how wet he was, the slickness painting the insides of his thighs...
The toys were on Erik's dresser. There were some for him, others for her. That's what they'd decided on, when they realized Erik's heat was coming. Neither of them had wanted him to go through this alone, but they'd planned to be responsible.
In the back of her mind, Magda remembered everything they'd agreed to beforehand, and knew what she should do. Beneath her, Erik again said, "Please," face so red, eyes so dark, need so great, and Magda's own need was greater than it had ever been, so that she was shaking in the wake of his scent. Instead of reaching for the expandable dildo beside the bed, she took hold of the base of her cock, and guided herself to his swollen entrance, and pushed inside.
Erik screamed, and it was only knowing that his foster parents had fled the house for the weekend that kept Magda from panicking in that first moment. In the next one, she became lost in him, his pulsing slickness all around her, urging her on. She'd never done this before, hesitated even to use her hand when this part of her rose without her meaning it, but now she found that fucking him came naturally, that every sound he made, that every clench of him around her made her thrust into him harder.
There was nothing in the world but him around her, and so she didn't think of pulling out. Not until she'd come inside him, her cock jerking for what seemed like a very long time; not until the pressure had begun to build, she swelling inside him and he clenching around her even tighter than before.
She thought of nothing else, and neither did he, until they were tied together. Then, the fire that had brought them together abated, until it was smoldering embers, giving off little enough smoke so that they could now see each other clearly.
"I thought we weren't going to do it like this," Erik said with a frown, as if he weren't the one who'd insisted, over and over, that he didn't mind if they risked it, that they were going to marry after graduation anyway, and so what did it matter if they started their family a little early?
It was hard to remember why she should fight with him, when she was buried so deeply inside him, when his hands were stroking her back, as if even filled with her he couldn't get enough. His scent was contented now, too, no chance he could fake being angry with her when his pulse points were all saying the opposite.
She nipped Erik's throat and said, "I changed my mind. Are you complaining?"
At this, Erik clenched around her again, so good and so tight. "No," he said, sounding a little drunk.
Magda nipped him again, to the same effect. She had never knotted before, not fully; no matter what anyone said, she'd always been frightened that it would hurt, the way it did when she woke up a little swollen from some dream or another. But this didn't hurt at all, only felt better the tighter he was around her, though it felt as if if should be the opposite.
By the time they were untied, they were naked together in Erik's bed, having eventually managed even to get their jeans off, and Magda's shoes. They were still entwined an hour later, kissing and biting and sucking, when Erik's scent began to rise again, Magda growing hard against his thigh.
Before they had come apart, Erik had begun complaining about the position, so now Magda said, "Turn over."
More obedient like this than at any other time, Erik did, and the sight of his back in front of her, the way he was displaying for her...Magda did not hesitate a second longer before mounting him.
This time, Erik's noises were muffled, his face buried in the pillow. Somehow, that made it even better, so that Magda came inside him much sooner than before, minutes before she had expected to, the swelling beginning even as she jerked inside him, so that there was no chance of pulling out this time.
And so it went, all night long and into the next day. The toys remained untouched beside the bed, and they discovered many different positions to rest in while they were tied. It was nearly noon by the time they had been separated for an hour without anything else happening.
"I need to call my parents," Magda said. She could only hope they hadn't called Moira's house during the night to ask for her; she'd told them she was sleeping over there. They didn't usually check up on her, but...she needed to know she'd have some time to prepare a story, if she needed one.