As often as Erik has kidnapped Charles over the past few years, and as many glorious opportunities as have presented themselves, it is both surprising and appalling that they still haven't fucked yet.
Charles has no idea what the holdup is, but it's getting old. They're getting old. Charles no longer has enough hair to be worth pulling on, and he used to love having his hair pulled on with someone's cock in his mouth (quite frankly, it would be easier to come to terms with the balding if he had Erik's cock to blame, rather than the short end of the genetic stick).
They've never even kissed, for god's sake.
1. sex pollen
The first time Charles thinks something is sure to happen between them, after years of nothing, is the time that Erik decides it would be a fantastic idea to attempt to recruit for his Brotherhood when they're on their way to their rendezvous point (meaning their anonymous, shabby motel room, wherein they will play chess for three days until Erik sees fit to return Charles to the mansion in much the same state in which he removed him: unravaged, unmarked, and completely sexually frustrated). Charles is not, of course, about to be party to this, and influences Erik's target just enough that she responds...well, a trifle more adamantly than she otherwise might have done.
Charles hadn't looked closely enough to be aware of the nature of her mutation prior to her unleashing it upon the both of them, but he's not complaining.
The motel is a mere five minutes away from her house - but by the time they're halfway there, Charles has a raging hard-on among the most exquisitely painful of his life, which is quite the feat considering all the trouble he has even getting an erection anymore, at times.
"Let's pull over," Charles suggests, noting with no small amount of glee the way Erik has hunched over the steering wheel, the ragged edge to his breathing, the dark heat in his eyes when he glances over at Charles for just a split second.
Finally, Charles thinks. Finally finally finally, and it's so much more than the aphrodisiac making him ache and strain and want.
Erik doesn't pull over. Charles supposes he must be waiting to get to the privacy of the motel room, which is fair enough, isn't it? Can't have someone coming along while they're at it in the car and trying to stop them, can they? Better to wait those excruciating few minutes until they're alone in the room, with the door locked behind them -
Except that, the moment the door slams shut and the tumblers click into place, Erik, rather than climbing into Charles' lap to rut up against him in the animalistic way to which Charles has so been looking forward to, flees to the bathroom, where he stays for all of the next twelve hours, leaving Charles all alone to take care of himself.
It takes Charles half an hour to get at his vibrator in amongst his luggage. Erik would ordinarily stack the suitcases within Charles' reach rather than strewn all over the floor, but evidently he was in too much of a hurry to consider that Charles might like easy access to his toys in the state that he's in.
Charles is quite put out about it, and it doesn't help that his batteries die an hour and a half in.
2. stranded/huddling for warmth
The first time Erik kidnaps Charles in the Blackbird is also the time Erik crashes the Blackbird onto a snow-covered mountain. This is before Erik is good enough with his mutation to fix it by waving at it with his hand, so they end up stuck there as the sun sets.
"It's cold," Charles points out, when the huge gaping hole in the side of the Blackbird has him shivering and breathing out plumes of white. "I'm cold." If he exaggerates his misery ever so slightly, the need to tuck his hands under his armpits to keep them from going numb is quite real. "We should huddle together for warmth - sharing body heat is the best way to preserve heat, you know."
He can just imagine it now, one thing leading to another, warming each other first with snuggling alone, turning into the inevitable embrace - he feels warmer already, thinking of it.
Erik glances at him, shivering too - and Charles can't wait, he just can't wait for what's coming next, he doesn't even care about what Hank will have to say to him about his baby being smashed all to pieces -
But when Erik stands up, he walks toward the back of the plane instead of over to Charles, rummages through the emergency supplies under the passenger seating, and comes up with not one but two heated sleeping bags.
Hating his life, Charles reaches for the radio, before he has to actually commit to spending the night on a mountain. If he's going to listen to Erik snore without getting any, it's not going to be in the out-of-doors. There could be bears.
3. auctioned for charity
On the day that Charles is auctioned off for charity, it takes him three minutes longer than it should to pick out Erik from the crowd.
The mustache isn't what throws him - large and brass as it is, it fits Erik's dramatic tendencies too well to distract from his eyes and the so-familiar lines around them. No, it's his wardrobe that does it. Rather than helmet and cape, rather even than a turtleneck or leather jacket, Erik is wearing a regular, ordinary dress shirt. A blue one.
For once in his life, Erik fits into the crowd rather than standing out from it. Charles doesn't care for it. Though he's had his share of fun at Erik's expense, he really prefers Erik as a peacock, decked out in all his (admittedly gaudy) glory; mustache aside, he looks rather more like a peahen right now - and while it's not all that bad, really, it is most certainly bizarre.
"I hope you don't think you're fooling anyone," Charles says as soon as they're on the sidewalk outside, Erik the brand-new owner of a Charles Xavier for the remainder of the day. "And what's more, you should peel that thing off your face before you cause an accident. People are already rubbernecking."
"It's real. I'd have to shave it." At this pronunciation, Erik's mustache twitches, and his eyes twinkle - and just like that, Charles' mouth goes dry, and he finds himself wondering what it would feel like, rubbing against his skin as Erik kissed his mouth, his neck, his chest, what the muted sensation below his waist might translate it to against his balls and shaft, if it would tickle -
"So what are you planning to do with me?" Charles asks, hoping against hope. Surely Erik has something filthy planned, after the obscene amount he paid for the privilege of Charles' company. "I'm all yours now."
Dinner and an evening of chess is not at all what Charles has in mind, but it's what he gets, and Erik has him home at midnight on the dot. He doesn't even get a goodnight kiss.
4. bodyswap
The time they switch bodies is actually Hank's fault, not Erik's; certainly Erik made the adjustments to Cerebro that caused it, but he followed Hank's written directions to the letter. At least he did in theory. Erik is one of those men capable of both reading a map on a roadtrip, and asking for directions when need indicates - Charles assumes this applies to other aspects of his life as well.
"Standing is such an interesting sensation," Charles notes, looking down at himself/Erik-in-the-chair. "I'm going to go try lying down now." He pauses at the doorway significantly, in a way he's delighted to discover comes natural to this body. "You know, everything above the waist is actually twice as sensitive as it used to be, it's really quite lovely."
He's really very clear about what he wants this time, and convinced Erik is vain enough that surely he wouldn't allow the opportunity to have sex with himself go to waste; but ten minutes later Erik still isn't in the bedroom, and, well, Charles isn't about to let the opportunity to play with Erik's enormous cock pass him by. Even if it's not quite as satisfying as it would be with Erik attached to it, groaning and grunting (Charles makes sure to try out some of that groaning and grunting, even though he's ordinarily pretty quiet himself), it's still something, which is more than Charles can usually say about these ridiculous situations they find themselves in at times.
When he goes back down to the lab, Erik is waiting, and looking at him with an expression Charles doesn't recognize. "It's fixed," he says, frowning. "Sorry, Charles."
"No need to apologize," Charles says. He doesn't add, 'If you'd come to bed with me, you really wouldn't need to apologize.'
5. waking up married
When Charles wakes up next to Erik in Vegas, his first thought isn't finally, but that they've done it and he doesn't remember a bit of the experience. Talk about disappointing.
He watches Erik sleep for a minute or two - long enough to conclude how very boring watching someone sleep actually is - before Erik starts awake.
"Morning," Charles says, and he doesn't have to try to sound cheerful only because it's occurred to him that what they've done once under the influence, they can do again, sober (and without headache, since he took care of that for the both of them upon waking, a habit he's had since his Oxford days).
Erik looks at him, and his eyes go wide; then he lifts up the sheet and has a look underneath, and when he turns to Charles again he seems relieved. The reason for this becomes clear when he says, "I don't think anything happened. We still have all our clothes on."
"...Lovely," Charles says. He reaches over to the bedside table to get the digital clock to face him, which is when he spots the marriage license. "Erik," he says, picking it up. "Erik, will you look at this? Evidently we did more than just pass out last night." The license is, from all appearances, legal; Charles can only hope he wasn't so drunk as to give a nosebleed or a brain tumor to whatever clerk he nudged into issuing this to them.
Erik, who was already out of bed and on his way to the bathroom (still in his khakis from yesterday, which is proof that they must have been too drunk to fool around on top of too drunk to remember getting married; Charles can't imagine any other reason for Erik to be wearing any article of clothing right now, much less pants), does a turnabout. He takes the marriage license from Charles' hand, eyes going wide, considers it for a very long moment, then says, "We'll get this annulled."
"...Right," Charles says in a tight, clipped voice. He can't believe this, he really can't. They're bloody married, and he's still not going to get laid. He doesn't know why they can't just have a damned quickie - or a one-day honeymoon - something, anything. At this point, he'd settle for a fifteen minute makeout with light petting above the waist.
Erik sets the marriage license down and continues to the bathroom. After a minute, the toilet flushes, and then the shower begins running.
It's then that Charles looks down and notices the ring on his finger. He thinks about it a moment, then slips it into his pocket. Erik will not, he hopes, think to ask about having it back if it's not actually in evidence.
Charles doesn't even get to see Erik wet, half-naked with a towel around his waist; he exits the bathroom fully dressed. The only view of anything Charles gets is of the back of his neck, slick and wet, Erik having neglected to dry it in his almighty hurry to cover up.
+1. amnesia
He wakes up with a headache slowly, in a room with walls that reflect back on him. He's lying in a bed; in the chair beside it sits a man who's staring at the floor, his elbows on his knees and his fingers steepled. This man is wearing the strangest-looking contraption on his head, and what appears to be a cape.
"Er, hello," he says to the man.
The man looks up abruptly, and oh, whoever he is, he's gorgeous. "Charles," he says. "How do you feel?"
"Who's Charles?" he asks.
*
Evidently, he's Charles. And the man in the chair is Erik. And usually, Charles is the one in a chair.
Also, amnesia. He evidently hit his head, which explains the headache.
This salient information absorbed, Charles next asks, "Are you my boyfriend? Life partner? I'm getting a vibe."
"...No," Erik says, and his hands go up abruptly to brush against the sides of the helmet he's wearing. He looks alarmed about something, but it promptly disappears off his face, to be replaced by a guarded expression.
"Exes?" Charles ventures. "There's something there, I can tell."
"...You're my second in command," Erik says then.
"Oh? Do I get a clown suit too?" He only asks because he's curious, but Erik's response to this is to leave the room, with a flamboyant wave of his cape behind him.
*
"I can take you home," Erik offers. "You might remember more quickly that way."
"No, I think I'll stay here," Charles answers. "I can't imagine that the scenery at home is any better than the scenery here. I'm referring to your face, by the way."
"..."
"So if we're not boyfriends or life partners, and we're not exes, what's keeping us from it? There's so clearly something there."
Erik opens his mouth and then closes it (while he appears to be a relatively reticent man, in this particular instance it seems to be actual inability to speak).
"Have we ever talked about it?" He takes Erik's continued silence as a no. "Well then, one of us must be emotionally constipated. Which is it?"
"...It's you," Erik says.
"Come now," Charles scoffs. "I doubt that. I doubt that very much. See how much I'm running my mouth about it? You're clearly the problem."
*
Erik looks so frankly devastated that Charles leaves him alone about it for several days. Then, in a strategy he's spent both of those days planning, he says, "I think I might be getting sick. Do you think my glands are swollen?"
When Erik comes close and reaches his hand towards Charles' neck, Charles grabs him and pulls him down, and kisses him full on the mouth. After a moment, Erik kisses him back, and after a moment more Charles has his hands under Erik's shirt, and this is very promising, this is the best thing that's ever happened to him, he knows because he remembers all of it, he remembers everything, all these years of frustration, because the hell he's not going to remember Erik with Erik's tongue in his mouth -
But then, Erik groans, and this brings him to what he must mistakenly believe are his senses, because he pushes away from Charles, panting heavily, and says, "We can't."
"...You have got to be kidding me," Charles says. "Why not?"
"I'm not going to take advantage of you," Erik says. "You don't even remember me. It would be wrong."
"Well, your rationale is wrong, because I remember you perfectly as of a minute or two ago. Now get back over here, do you know how long I've been waiting for something to happen between us?"
Erik mutters something that sounds like 'Stockholm Syndrome.'
"Oh, don't be ridiculous. First of all, I've been in your secret lair for what, three days? It would take longer than that. Not to mention that I've wanted to jump your bones for twenty-odd years. And also, if all else fails, Lima Syndrome, so I'd say we're even. Get back over here."
When Erik still seems reluctant, Charles takes the liberty of grabbing his cape and dragging him back down, and Erik falling on top of him is good even when they're at an awkward angle, and better when they're not, and even better than that when Erik loses the helmet and the cape and the rest of his clothes, and Charles divests himself of the same, and Erik groans just as prettily coming into Charles' hand as Charles once groaned wrapped in the packaging.
*
"Whatever took us so long?" Charles asks, somewhat dreamily, when they're both half asleep. "We could have done this years ago."
"I'm not a mind reader," Erik says.
"...What's that supposed to mean?" Charles asks, a minute later when he's thought it over and thought it over a little more and still isn't following.
"You figure it out," Erik says, which hardly seems fair.
Eventually, Charles gets that that's Erik's point.