"You know, I thought she looked familiar," Charles says as he follows Erik into their room.
He's rewarded by a scathing look as the door closes behind them. "You could have said something."
"But how? I've never been able to get a word in during one of your little speeches," Charles points out. Thankfully, he's been inured to Erik's scathing looks for some time; when Erik looks at him again, no more impressed this time than he was two seconds ago, Charles offers him a smile, the slow, sweet, promising one Erik's always dismissed as 'cheeky,' while never failing to succumb to Charles' supposedly nonexistent charms.
"It's not as if I had the helmet," Erik says, glaring at his reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall. "You could have stopped me."
Not from making mutant supremacist speeches on live television. Not from marching into the UN with a list of demands anytime he wishes. Not from any of the other things Charles wants to stop Erik from doing, but doesn't because changing Erik's mind means nothing if it's not Erik himself who's doing the changing. No, Charles should let Erik do all of those things, but if Erik's about to give a recruitment speech to a vaguely familiar looking middle-aged woman who ended up getting offended (just like she had back in 1962) and changing Erik's body into that of a woman's (also just like 1962), then Charles should stop him. As long as the consequences are something Erik wishes to avoid, Charles should do something about it, but keep his nose out otherwise.
Charles is sorely tempted to point this out, and at some length. But it's the first day of this weekend together, one of the few they've managed over the last few years. He's not going to be the one to start something, even if Erik's leaving the door wide open. Instead, he takes the opportunity of Erik's preoccupation with the mirror to observe Erik for himself.
There's not much to see at the moment, really. Erik's shoulders are narrower than they were an hour ago, his suit thus hanging a little loosely. (That'll embarrass him, when he gets around to noticing; Erik's always been fussy about his appearance.) His hands are a bit smaller. That's about it. If Erik were a little closer to him at the moment, his cheeks would be smooth, with no hint of the five o'clock shadow he usually has by this time in the afternoon...
"You're going to have to get undressed if you want to get a decent look," Charles says. "Assuming that you haven't developed X-Ray vision in the last five minutes, that is."
It doesn't come out half as casually as he meant it to, for Erik's glare turns back on him. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
"—Well. Yes." There's no point in trying to deny it. Erik clearly remembers the last time as well as Charles himself does. He's remembering it right now, in fact, a tendril of interest threading through everything else Erik's feeling, from discomfort to annoyance to something he seems to be invested in keeping to himself.
Charles has long since learned how to cultivate Erik's interest in his favor. He smiles that promising smile, lays his hand on Erik's hip. It's a very nice hip. Charles can tell. Not only that, but he remembers Erik's curves.
Erik looks, if anything, even less impressed than before.
"We have so little time together as it is," Charles says, because he's not above guilt trips, and if Erik won't say anything, well, Charles will just have to move on to the next part of his argument without prompting. "Do you really want to waste any more of it when I could be licking out your cunt instead?" He's also not above dirty talk, and he's in Erik's head deeply enough to get Erik's physical reaction to the words, the rush of heat in his groin, the clenching of his inner muscles. He's wet already.
"When you put it like that," Erik says, coming to a split-second decision to set the brooding aside for long enough to get some benefit out of this. Thankfully, Erik's always been good at compartmentalizing, above all else; by the time he leans down to kiss Charles, he's focusing on precisely what Charles wants him to.
*****
It's been years since Charles performed this particular sex act, nearly forty since he's performed it with Erik. It takes longer for him to get into a comfortable position than it did back then, and he no longer has any hair remaining for Erik to pull on—but if everything else has changed, Erik still tastes exactly as good as he did then. Charles could stay here for hours if his back cooperated, licking Erik's cunt until he's close, then slipping a finger inside to stroke him as he moves up to suck his clit.
Erik comes twice before Charles' Viagra begins to kick in. By the time he comes a third time, Charles is more or less hard enough for penetration, but Erik's never been satisfied with that. When Charles makes it into bed, leaned back against the headboard, he ends up with Erik in his lap, sucking his earlobe and pinching his nipples, mouthing all the best places on Charles' neck and chest. For his part, Charles spends most of that time playing with Erik's small breasts, no less lovely for having less lift to them than they did years ago. When Erik finally guides Charles inside, Charles gives into the temptation to bury his face between Erik's breasts as Erik rides him. He leaves one hand on Erik's hip, guides the other to Erik's clit. Surely Erik took long enough to prep him that he'll be able to come again, he thinks, and turns out to be absolutely correct, for Erik comes twice more before Charles does, an even deeper pleasure than before as he clenches around Charles' stiff, thick cock.
Afterward, Erik's afterglow lasts approximately until he realizes he's also rather sore. It's about that time he remembers he's meant to be brooding.
"Are you upset about something specific?" Charles asks when he's sick of it, which is another thing that doesn't take long. "I mean, other than the obvious."
"Don't act like you don't know," Erik says. He's not looking at Charles, currently focusing on tying closed his bathrobe, which he got up from the bed to retrieve a moment ago.
"Know what?"
Erik gives off a distinct air of 'You always make me say it, don't you?' while failing to actually say anything. Just when Charles is about to roll his eyes and start on the grading he needs to get done over the weekend, Erik says, "The last time this happened—"
"Yes?"
"I lost an inch and never got it back."
"An inch of what?" It takes a moment, but then the lightbulb goes off. "Wait—of your penis?"
"Yes," Erik says, stiffly. It's probably a good thing that he's facing away from Charles, since that means he can't see Charles' face and whatever expression is currently on it.
"What, nine inches isn't enough now?" Charles asks, incredulous.
Erik says nothing, his mortification clear in the set of his shoulders.
"That's absurd. What's more, it didn't happen. I would have noticed." Charles is not going to laugh. He's not. There's no better way to get rid of Erik for years than to make him feel as if he's been humiliated. It doesn't really make much of a difference if he did it to himself in the first place. "And not only would I have noticed, I would most likely have commented. I mean, I'd have tried to spare your feelings, but...do you really think I wouldn't have said something about it?"
He feels Erik turning this over, weighing the facts: Charles' general lack of tact, Charles' eidetic memory, all the times over the years when, if Charles had had that information in his arsenal, he'd have used it to wound, to hurt Erik the way they always seemed to hurt each other. In the end, though, Erik's own recollection of his imaginary ten inches is deeply enough ingrained that, despite the introduction of actual evidence, his conclusion ends up being more or less a draw.
After a moment, Erik hmphs and gets back into bed, sitting beside Charles on top of the covers. For a while, Charles works on his grading while Erik reads a paperback, refusing to meet Charles' eyes any of the times Charles glances at him.
"You know, I have plenty of memories of what it looked like during our first couple weeks on the road," Charles says when he can't take it anymore. "I'd be happy to share them with you for purposes of comparison."
"That's not necessary," Erik says.
"All right." Charles considers threatening to shove forty years' worth of memories of Erik's dick into his head if Erik decides he's lost another inch after he changes back, but the more he thinks about it, the less he wants to argue about that right now. He has far better things to concern himself with than trying to argue with yet another one of Erik's unsubstantiated notions. Namely, how long it will be until Erik's feeling up to sitting on his face, and how much he'll let Charles go down on him tomorrow. It's not as if they have all that much time, either in the context of this particular situation or in general. They may as well fit as much in as they can, while they can.