Charles catches wind of the video on his way down to breakfast.
He could hardly miss it, considering that every single student he passes in the hallway does their level best not to think about it as soon as they spot him. When will people learn that thinking quietly about things they'd rather he not hear is a much better strategy than pointedly not thinking about them? It's like shouting "Nothing to see here!" at the top of your lungs when no one thought there was prior to your making a scene about it.
At any rate, the moment he realizes what, exactly, he's picking up on, he whirls around and heads for his study instead. He locks the door, boots up his laptop, and it doesn't take three minutes after that to find the video that has evidently been all over the internet since sometime late last night.
As sex tapes go, it's relatively tame, at least as far as Charles can tell. He's never spent much time contemplating pornography for the same reason he almost never watches movies—he can't connect to a fictional situation if he can't pick up on the thoughts of the people on the screen—but he's relatively certain that a video which only shows a penis (Erik's) for three seconds and afterward focuses entirely on his (most excellent) backside while Charles gives him a blowjob counts as soft core pornography at worst. You can't even see anything; it's all implied.
While Charles has tolerated the company of Erik's fleet of floating video cameras in various hotel rooms over the last fifteen years, he's never had any interest in seeing the results, for much the same reason as he's never had any interest in so much as kissing Erik while he has the helmet on. Thus he only intends to watch the video once so he'll know exactly what it contains and be able to make an independent assessment uncolored by anyone else's perceptions.
Yet, once it's over, he finds himself watching it a second time from the beginning.
It certainly brings the experience back, doesn't it? Charles may not be able to feel Erik's mind in the present, but simply watching it happen, being able to extrapolate...it lets him recall how Erik tastes, salty and good as he fucks Charles' mouth; how Erik smells, and that's good, too, the way he overwhelms Charles' senses, the sharp motions of Erik's hips between his hands, the increasing harshness of Erik's breathing filling the room as Erik's mind narrows down to their points of contact, Charles' hot wet mouth and Charles' warm strong hands and Charles' eyes watching him, eager as ever. Erik going rigid with a bitten-off exclamation, as if his orgasm is a secret he'd like to keep even as he spills into Charles' mouth. And afterward, when they're kissing again, the soreness sets into Charles' jaw and throat, but he's always liked that, always wanted a reminder of Erik for as long as he can have it.
Charles watches the video a third time. A fourth. He's definitely beginning to see the appeal. In fact, after he watches it for the fifth time, he finds himself digging around his desk drawer, trying to remember what he did with that vibrator. It's possible he removed it from his office a while ago in the attempt to persuade Erik that he does, in fact, occasionally have work to do, so if Erik drops by for a quickie in the middle of a school day, well, he may leave disappointed. (Given that Erik has no compunction in regards to making vibrators out of otherwise nonsexual materials around Charles' desk, Charles isn't really sure what he was thinking.)
He's just started the video for a sixth time when the phone rings. Not the one in his pocket, but the one on his desk, which probably would have served as his first warning if he weren't so distracted.
Charles hastily mutes the video, then picks up the phone. "Charles Xavier's office," he says, trying to sound like he hasn't spent the last twenty minutes fantasizing about having Magneto's penis in his mouth.
"This is Theresa Pryde," a woman says. "Kitty Pryde's mother."
"Oh, hello, Mrs. Pryde. What can I do for you?" Charles asks, hoping this isn't going where it is one hundred percent guaranteed to go considering the entire rest of the world knew about that video before he even got out of bed.
*****
Charles spends all day placating parents, doing his best to sound apologetic about having had Magneto's penis in his mouth at least once about ten years ago without actually apologizing for anything. It's only due to four and a half decades of holding his tongue around parents that he manages not to say anything along the lines of, 'You seem far more interested in my sex life than your daughter is. Is there some reason for that?' or 'Your son is already gay. I promise you he's not about to get any gayer.'
Later that afternoon, he declares his office hours closed, resolving to not so much as check his voicemail until Monday. What a waste of a Saturday this has been. If there's anything positive to say about it, it's that at least no one's withdrawn their child from the school in light of this...yet.
It's well into the evening when his cell finally rings.
"This is a travesty," Erik declares the moment Charles answers it.
"Mm. So I've been told." He might have said, 'Oh, would you shut up,' but evidently his filter's on to stay...at least until he's had the chance to wind down with a few drinks. "Repeatedly." By which he means seventeen times since this morning. Eighteen now, though he doubts Erik's outrage is in quite the same vein as the rest of it.
Erik spouts off for a while: Our private lives are a joke. No one's ever going to take me seriously now that they know how large a penis I have. Why aren't you more upset? (Oh, I know, it's because you had your pants on the entire time.) This is a major step back for mutantkind. What do you mean, this kind of thing wouldn't happen if I took more precautions with my files/did background checks when recruiting for the Brotherhood? How dare you criticize me? That's all you ever do!
And so on and so forth. It's only so much noise after a while, though comforting in its own way. If Erik's griping at Charles over the phone, he's not blowing anything up (well, usually not, and even if he were, Charles would be able to hear it in the background), or otherwise trying to get himself killed (the man's been courting ceramic bullets since 1962; Charles has had to nudge various authorities away from such a policy any number of times over the years).
Around "major step back for mutantkind," Charles turns the video on again, now sitting at the desk in his bedroom—and that's even more comforting, Erik's voice in his ear, irate though it is, Erik on the screen right in front of him. It's not a perfect substitute for having Erik in the flesh, but it's better than anything else they've tried. The next best thing, he supposes.
Not to mention that Charles can finally get himself off now that he's retired for the evening, provided he can get back into the mindset. He might even be willing to reconsider phone sex, though probably not tonight. Sometime when Erik isn't quite so dedicated to obnoxious ranting, perhaps.
*****
When they next meet, it's at a hotel in San Francisco, in the same room they'd stayed in during their recruitment road trip some fifty years ago. While Charles couldn't care less where they stay provided it's accessible and has a bed, Erik's sentimental side is at least as stubborn as the rest of him; if they'd taken any other room, he would only end up pouting about it all weekend.
Erik arrives half an hour after Charles does. He sets his overnight bag down on the table by the window, and immediately comes over to the bed for a kiss. One kiss becomes two becomes three becomes several minutes before Charles can make himself pull back, just enough to say, a little breathless now, "Did you remember to bring it?"
Erik looks at him, with an expression just as suspicious as his tone had been when Charles asked him about this over the phone to begin with, then pulls a flash drive out of his pocket. He hands it to Charles, saying, "This isn't the only copy."
"I didn't expect it would be," Charles says, amused that Erik still hasn't figured out what this is about. "Though I certainly hope the rest are in a safe deposit box." The last thing he needs is to have to listen to everybody and their cousin's opinion about his sex life again now that things have finally quieted down. "Or, at the very least, that you didn't leave them within the reach of impressionable Brotherhood members."
(The word 'impressionable' has been indelibly pounded into Charles' head over the past weeks, to the point that he finds himself using it in every conversation even when it's nowhere close to the word he wants. Which would have been 'disgruntled,' in this particular instance. Or 'any.')
Charles places his laptop in his lap. After he plugs the flash drive in, he pats the spot on the bed where the laptop had been sitting before Erik's arrival.
Erik doesn't always know how to take a hint, but he takes this one, hanging his jacket up and removing his shoes and socks before climbing into bed. By the time he gets there, Charles has already located the folder containing all the videos Erik's taken of them, and—
"...There are fifty-two of these? Erik, really," Charles says, and while one part of him is reeling with horror at the thought that someone could theoretically release one of these weekly for an entire year, the more immediate concern that comes to mind is, "We're never going to be able to watch them all this weekend."
"Watch them," Erik repeats, dryly. "Is that what we're doing? I thought you weren't interested in that."
Charles has previously been emphatically against watching pornography of any kind with Erik. He got quite testy about it the seventh or eighth time Erik tried to talk him into it. He may even have gone into a rant about how he's no more interested in watching their sex tapes together than he would be in having sex with Erik while he has the helmet on. The entire concept offended him for basically the same reason, which he feels rather silly about now that he never seems to masturbate to anything else.
"Yes. Well. I can be wrong," he says, scrolling through the thumbnails as an excuse not to have to see Erik's gleeful expression at this admission.
Erik scoffs, a "Heh" punctuating the pointed thought that although this is a start, it doesn't exactly top the list of the things Charles should admit he's wrong about.
He scoots closer, draping his arm across Charles' shoulders and peering down at the screen. Though most of the thumbnails are on the dark side, making it hard for Charles to work out what might be going on, Erik has vivid memories of the contents of each file, which is enough to make Charles feel warm and flushed as they wash over his mind. Erik's breath against his ear doesn't help, nor does the kiss that follows a moment later.
"You should choose a few you think I'd especially like," Charles says. "And after we're done watching those, maybe we'll make another."
Erik's mind lights up at the prospect of Charles actively participating in his obsession rather than merely tolerating the cameras as long as they don't obscure his own view of the proceedings.
"Yes," he says, and hastens to comply.
Later, when the cameras come floating out of Erik's bag, Charles feels self-conscious about it for the first time ever; but it only takes a minute or two before he's wrapped up in Erik enough to have nearly forgotten they're being recorded.