"We could have died today," Charles pointed out once Erik had settled in beside him. He'd been sitting on this line all day, ever since their skirmish with the Sentinels early this morning, and now he ran his finger up and down Erik's chest, waiting on his answer.
Erik sighed. He'd waved the lights off several minutes before, but Charles could still feel his frown. "They weren't anywhere near us. Don't exaggerate."
Charles took a moment to reflect on the irony of Erik being the one to tell him not to exaggerate, then said, "Erik. That line was your cue to make your move. I need to be comforted. The method with which I would like to be comforted involves your dick."
"Keep your voice down," Erik said.
Charles rolled his eyes, and projected a mental image of himself rolling them, just in case Erik had missed it. "Erik, no one gives a damn if we fuck."
"You're being loud."
Well, if he was going to get stuck on Charles' decibel level—It's not like everyone hasn't noticed that we share a bunk, Erik! It's not like it's a secret that we're involved! Really it never had been; their trysts had been the least secret secret in the history of the school, at least.
"Everyone will hear us," Erik said, in a hissing whisper that wasn't nearly as difficult to overhear as he seemed to think.
So what? We've heard all of them, Charles argued. None of them were memories he wished to dwell on—everyone in their little group had been a student or a teacher at his school, not so long ago. And some had been both. But in such close quarters, all you could really do was pretend to be asleep while it was happening, and continue pretending you hadn't heard any of it the next day. It was one of the least pleasant realities of their current situation, living out of the tiny, cramped quarters of the Blackbird because no safe house remained safe long enough to bother unpacking anymore. We haven't had sex in months. I'd rather not be celibate when I die.
"—You're not going to die," Erik said, and that was another irony, that he could be the one to say things like that when Charles was the one who had to see people's lights blotted out through Cerebro, all day, every day. When he could so rarely offer any of them any comfort, never mind the rescue that was actually needed. He tried to hold onto hope, he did, but every day there were so many fewer of their people left. If there was any hope remaining, it was a very grim hope indeed.
Anything I've done once, I'm sure I can manage again, Charles said. He was aware he was being both manipulative and whiny, in a way that would likely embarrass him later—he'd spent sixty years refusing to beg Erik for anything, or even ask for any favor in a way that hinted he cared about the outcome—but he couldn't stand another night of feeling the solid heat of Erik's body next to him without doing anything about it. Erik, I need you. If you don't sleep with me, I'm going to proposition Hank. I'm sure he'd be up for it. (Hank absolutely wouldn't. They'd been bad together through the sixties and early seventies, and they'd be worse now.)
The Erik of not really all that long ago probably would have fixated on Charles' last statement. That Erik would have either gone after Hank, or stormed off for a good six months. This Erik merely said, "...I suppose I don't have much choice, then."
Oh, thank God, he was actually seeing reason. Charles still wasn't used to an Erik who was capable of that. "You really don't," Charles said, pulling Erik on top, kissing and nuzzling his jaw. "We should be able to make it quick, I think—I took my Viagra fifteen minutes ago, so."
Erik hesitated—he'd clearly been envisioning the kind of quickie involving a handjob for him and nipple play for Charles, which in all honesty probably would have been the quietest, most sensible thing for them to do.
"Don't you dare balk now." Charles pushed Erik away, just far enough so that he could pull his own shirt off, and then pull the hem of Erik's up as a hint. I know you want to ride me. I know you want to open yourself up on my cock. I know you want me to come inside you.
He was playing dirty: Talking about sex had always affected Erik at least as much if not more than anything else. And it worked; instead of protesting again, Erik helped Charles pull his shirt off, then shimmied out of his boxers as Charles pushed his pajama pants down. Charles wasn't hard yet, but he was excited, his cock beginning to swell, a process that hastened when Erik lay back down with him, bare skin on bare skin as they kissed in the dark, the covers pulled up to mid-chest.
Erik knew better than to try to stroke Charles' cock to full hardness; instead, he ran his hands up Charles' side and belly and chest, then over his nipples. He kissed Charles' neck, then his shoulder, sucked one nipple into his mouth for a few minutes before moving to the other. Charles, for his part, ran his fingers into Erik's thick mane of hair and held on, focused at least as much on making no sound than on his building pleasure. He'd always been the more vocal of the two of them during sex, but he could hardly shout here, and it would be beyond foolish to dim the others' hearing in the next rooms—there was no way Charles could manage that selectively enough for it not to pose a danger, not unless he was focusing a great deal better than he had ever been capable of during sex.
The next time Charles reached down to check, he had a full, stiff erection, more than adequate for what he'd wanted it for. I'm ready, he said, reaching for the mournful, barely-touched bottle of lube under the mattress.
A minute later, Erik sank down on Charles, taking him in inch by inch, and now he was the one who had to bite off a groan, loud enough probably to wake everyone else on the jet, whether or not they had enhanced hearing.
Do try to be a little quieter, Charles said as he reached for Erik's cock, wrapping his slick fingers around Erik's length.
Erik's next groan was muffled by Charles' neck, which he'd pressed his face against. He soon found a rhythm, at first hesitant, slower than usual, lest the bedsprings give off too much noise—but it wasn't long before he picked up the pace, fucking himself ruthlessly on Charles' cock, gasping against Charles' shoulder as Charles' hand on his cock matched Erik's own chosen rhythm.
By the time Erik came, ejaculating all over Charles' hand and chest and even getting his chin in four long spurts, the blanket had fallen to the floor, and absolutely everyone else on the Blackbird was one-hundred percent aware of what was going on in here. The walls really were surprisingly thin for an aircraft which had cost better than fifty million dollars once all the modifications had been factored in.
Charles didn't really care, and decided not to share this information with Erik as Erik continued to ride him for another few minutes.
I don't think it's going to happen for me tonight, Charles said finally. Not like this.
So Erik pulled off, and once he'd regained his breath, returned his attention to Charles' nipples, so that Charles' orgasm, when it came some minutes later, wasn't centered in his groin, but instead spread throughout his body, steadily increasing waves of pleasure that ended abruptly, his nipples in particular becoming oversensitive so that he had to swat Erik off of them rather rudely.
Charles was drowsing, incredibly, amazingly content, when Erik said, "Do you think anyone heard us?"
"I'm sure they didn't," Charles lied, though he knew he'd be caught out in the morning, when no one would be able to meet their eyes at breakfast. Anyway, he decided, as he drifted down into sleep, it had definitely been worth it.
The next morning, Charles woke up feeling completely delicious, sleepily reliving the events of the night before for a good half-hour before he started to become anything like alert. To make things better, Erik was still in bed beside him, though he usually got up hours before Charles did. He seemed to enjoy starting his days off by haranguing everyone else about everything they were doing, and why they were doing it wrong based on Erik's lifetime's worth of experience of hiding out in-between stints of making Charles' life difficult and all his subsequent imprisonments. Charles had grown used to having to mediate disputes first thing in the morning (which in all honesty wasn't all that different from running a school, if you ignored the stakes; despite everything, it made Charles feel rather nostalgic much of the time, especially once anyone uttered the words, "He started it!")
"Good morning," Charles said, glad to have a different sort of nostalgia in effect on this particular waking. All the times he'd woken beside Erik after one of their nights together, in various hotels and cabins across the country, wherever he'd happened to be speaking at a conference when Erik showed himself, or wherever he'd felt like going when Erik showed up at the house to demand a few days of Charles' time. They were good memories, moments of light among all the regrets of the past. They weren't the only good memories, weren't the only light, but they were what Charles clung to the most days—perhaps because they were so much less painful than his memories of Raven in their youth, or memories of his school and so many of the teachers who had taught there, the young people who'd found sanctuary within its walls. Erik, at least, was here with him.
"You have to erase them," Erik said, clearly having missed Charles' big emotional moment. That was the trouble with non-telepaths, really; they were so bad at following things unless you spelled it out for them word by word.
"—What?"
Erik gave him an impatient look. "You have to erase everyone's memory of us last night. I'm not going out there until you do."
Oh. That. "I don't think that would be very ethical," Charles said.
"That's never stopped you before."
That was a point. Charles had started by erasing the various members of the CIA's memories of certain noises and thumping which had emerged from the room in which he and Erik had changed into dry and non-skintight clothing. He'd never hesitated to wipe the memories of whomever might have picked up on two male voices groaning through thin motel walls—especially back in 1962. And there'd been more than once on that recruitment trip that they'd pulled off the road and fucked in the backseat in the middle of the day, and nevermind who saw because Charles could make them forget there had been anything to see.
"—I could be convinced," Charles said, because now he'd remembered just how arousing Erik had always found the blatant misuse of his ability. "As long as you understand that I want you to convince me with your body."
Erik hmphed, but in the end he really made a very compelling case for himself.