Chapter Text
Erik and Charles are in the kitchen heating up leftovers…and then it gets really intense and they do it.
Erik is putting this morning’s pancakes in the toaster for dinner.
Charles has never seen anything so innovative of reheating pancakes in a toaster; has never seen anything so anti-establishment as having breakfast for dinner. It’s so hot because Erik could start an insurgency with this kind of rebellion.
“Erik,” Charles gasps, feeling really intense.
Erik spins around, looking bewildered.
“What? Do you want some?” he asks.
Charles does want some, so he pins Erik to the counter, moves in for a kiss, but Erik says something about not wanting to have sex when he’s this hungry.
So Charles watches and broods and fidgets as Erik eats breakfast for dinner.
Then Charles is pressed between the counter and a suddenly naked Erik, hungry for the sticky-maple press of lips, and they do it.
--
Charles is doing his taxes, and Erik is lounging nearby…and then things get really intense and they do it.
Charles is in his study doing taxes.
“Charles!” Erik calls from nearby.
“What?” Charles calls back.
“What are you doing?” Erik calls from nearerby.
“Taxes!”
“Oh.” Erik says from nearestby, hovering in the doorway.
Charles sets his pen down on the half filled out IRS form in front of him. Erik lingers several moments longer than he needs to. Charles is about to ask him what’s up, but thanks to his super convenient telepathy, he knows Erik is getting turned on by the thought of a generous tax return.
Charles’ eyes darken in desire, and suddenly it’s really intense, so they have desk sex and end up smearing the ink on the IRS forms in a flurry of political rebellion.
Erik ruts into him, complaining breathlessly about thieving bureaucrats.
Charles chokes on a sound that’s something between a laugh and a moan, and it gets lost somewhere in Erik’s mouth.
“Oh, stick it to the man.” Charles groans.
“Oh, god. April 15th.” Erik shudders. “Let’s wait ‘til the last fucking minute to file this shit, Charles.”
Oh, the thrill.
“Erik, Erik, yes!” Charles keens, canting his hips up and coming on their stomachs.
“You know,” Erik admits moments later. “I sometimes fantasize about filing a joint tax return.”
“Someday, dear.” Charles says dreamily.
--
Erik passes by Charles in the living room, asking, “What kind of laundry detergent did you say you wanted?” and then it gets really intense and they do it.
Charles is sprawled like a beached starfish on the living room sofa. He’s in nothing but his boxers because the rest of his laundry is dirty. He’s pretty sure things won’t get intense tonight because his boxers are Fruit of the Loom and come three to a pack. All of his sexiest cardigans are in the clothes hamper.
Erik’s doing that weird lingering thing in the doorway again and Charles looks up from his riveting book about genomes, chewing on a bite of toasted pancake thoughtfully.
“What kind of laundry detergent did you say you wanted?” Erik asks distractedly, looking Charles up and down and making no effort to hide the lust or adoration in his eyes.
Charles swallows the last of his insurgency pancake, feeling his skin warm.
“The kind that doesn’t cover up your man musk.” Charles answers, and maintains awkward eye contact as he says it, because that’s just the way Charles is.
“Oh.” Erik mutters, trying to keep his smile in check. Charles wishes he wouldn’t. Erik crosses the room and straddles Charles’ thighs like it’s what he meant to do all along.
“I thought you liked Gain,” Erik murmurs, accusatory.
“If you already knew what I wanted, why did you come and ask?” Charles questions, even though he already knows.
Erik doesn’t answer. Just presses a needy kiss to Charles’ obscenely red mouth.
Moments later, Charles loses his unsexy boxers, and Erik never does pick up the laundry detergent.
--
Erik and Charles are doin’ it, and then it gets really intense…so they keep on doin’ it.
“Oh. Oh my god, Erik.” Charles groans, rolling his hips down in perfect time with his lover’s thrusts. Erik’s got his face buried in Charles’ neck, mouthing the skin there, giving shivery sighs and quiet groans of his own. And then Charles tightens his legs around Erik’s waist, says, “Kiss me,” and Erik does, deep and thorough wet.
It’s late afternoon. The dying sun smolders through the slats of the blinds in their bedroom (our bedroom, Charles thinks happily). It’s one of those muggy days where the air is almost too thick to breathe. It’s stickier with their sex.
Erik tongues his mouth open shamelessly. Palms the back of Charles’ sweaty head, guides their mouths together, kisses him with this languorous indecency that leaves them both literally shaking. It makes Charles feel more open and relaxed than he already is, and his legs snap wider almost involuntarily then. He feels Erik’s battered heart stutter against his own chest as he takes him deeper, as deep as he can be in Charles’ body.
It’s right and whole like this. But then Erik rocks his hips out and then back in gently a few times, and there’s an aching, screamingly wonderful moment when Erik’s cock brushes against that spot inside. Charles chokes on a moan. He thought it was intense before, but now it’s really intense. Like, previously-unreached-levels-of-intensity intense.
His wet mouth slips from Erik’s, and he gasps, “Right there, don’t stop.”
And Erik doesn’t, would never dream of it now, and he rocks in and out of Charles’ twitching warmth until Charles has got his head thrown back and his throat bared. Erik licks the sweat from his collarbone and breathes Charles’ name against the wet skin, reverent and needy and almost awestruck with it all.
Then there’s the moment where both of them are on the edge, bodies tensed and ready for it. Erik purposefully slows to wait the feeling out. The imminent orgasm licking at Charles’ spine and it’s indescribable. It’s melting him from the inside and, yes, it’s demanding, but Charles doesn’t mind the frustration when he’s suspended seconds before climax with Erik like this. He never imagined he could be this close and not lose control, not completely slip past the point of no return, but he is. Just barely. But he is.
Then Erik sighs, lets free a big chestful of air, and fits himself just a bit deeper in Charles’ body. Charles’ knees fall wide and he arches down, down onto Erik’s cock, as if he could be deeper, and he feels the glow of Erik’s orgasm as well as his own.
And Erik – well, he isn’t usually too vocal, that’s more Charles, but he almost wails with it this time because it’s so intense. It’s not a sound he’s ever made during sex. He keeps thrusting until they’re both spent, wringing Charles out and prolonging his climax to the last possible second.
Charles feels his whole body shiver and warmth bloom everywhere. He accidentally catches a couple of Erik’s thoughts, like beautiful when he comes and oh god have I done something; why is he, why is he…
Erik’s got a strange expression. There’s a little wrinkle between his brows and a tiny frown. Belatedly, Charles realizes it’s a look of concern—no, more than that, anxiety—which is really not usual after sex. It’s always hooded eyelids and sex-slackened features, which Charles always makes a point to appreciate because Erik’s usually so tightly wound.
“Erik? Are you alright?” Charles asks, wincing at the hoarseness of his voice.
“Me? You’re…” Erik starts, edging on hysteric, and Charles is, too, but then Erik brings a fingertip to Charles’ cheek and it comes up moist.
“Oh.” Charles says, breathes it, and almost can’t look at Erik anymore because he’s embarrassed, even though he’s not completely sure why. “I’m…just fine, really. I’m feeling very good, in fact! I wasn’t even aware of it until you pointed it out.”
And really, he wasn’t. It’s only now that he feels the tear-tracks down his cheeks and a residual dampness in his eyes. His lips are sore from where he’s bitten them too hard. He’s never had reactions so involuntary he wasn’t even aware of them until after-the-fact. It would almost be frightening if his heart wasn’t fluttering so happily inside his chest.
He feels too shaken and raw, throat still thick and he feels like he’s blanketed in nerves, but there’s that deeply satisfying bliss, too, and his body shook with it, his skin flushed with it, and his throat wailed with it, and when that wasn’t enough, he cried with it.
He’s not sure how to say all that with words. So he leans up, kisses Erik and smiles a little self-deprecatingly into it, and lets his feelings spill into Erik’s head.
Erik wipes his cheeks dry when he finally understands. He presses himself to Charles, hushes that whisper of shame, and gives way to his own bliss.
--
Charles gives Erik a sweater, and then it gets really intense so they do it.
“Oh, Erik! That jumper fits you perfectly.” Charles exclaims, beaming.
“Well, ah, thank you. For the sweater.”
It’s cashmere and he won’t deny that it makes him feel wonderful. Tactilely and emotionally.
“Yes, for the jumper.”
“For the sweater, yes.”
Charles just stares at him and Erik scratches the back of his head awkwardly.
“Oh, here,” Charles says after a moment of silence, and steps right into Erik’s space to brush off an (alleged) piece of lint at his collar. He’s close enough that Erik can feel the heat of their bodies almost touching and Charles’ soft little exhales ghosting down his neck; can even feel the vibration of Charles’ tiny hmms as he spends a ridiculous full minute on that evasive piece of lint.
Despite Charles’ gentle affections, Erik’s muscles tighten uncomfortably.
“Something wrong?” Charles asks, smoothing his (warm, lovely, sinfully adept) hands down Erik’s chest.
Yes, Erik doesn’t say. I feel like one of those clinically depressed terriers whose lonely, middle-aged owners stuff into argyle sweaters.
“Cardigans are just,” he tries to explain, and realizes that’s fucking stupid to say, too, because Charles is staring at him, wide-eyed and expectant in a cardigan of his own.
“What’s wrong with cardigans?” Charles asks, and he doesn’t even have the gall to sound mad. Erik can deal with mad, but not confused and…vaguely hurt.
Goddammit.
“Nothing. They’re…alright,” Sexy on you, he accidentally projects, and Charles flushes beautifully. “for you. But I don’t…”
“Oh, you…you pull it off just fine, Erik.” Charles hastens with a clumsy smile. His hands don’t move from Erik’s chest, and his heart tightens in that familiar, insatiable desire for Charles and his pinkened cheeks, bright eyes, soft, pliant lips that will part for those unfairly arousing noises when Erik touches him, and sometimes, when he touches himself for Erik, too, creamy thighs spread wide while his hand bobs up and down and his hooded eyes are daring Erik to take over for him…
Apparently, that’s a projection, too. Before Erik can apologize for being so ragingly inappropriate in a situation that calls for anything but sex, Charles presses his lips to Erik’s, wet and open-mouthed and demanding, while his fingers are working at the buttons and tugging the hideous cardigan over Erik’s head.
Then there’s a messy scuffle to the bedroom, Charles laughing the whole way for no reason at all, and…
…And if Erik insists Charles leave his own cardigan during sex, well—he’s not going to complain.
--
Charles is excitedly telling Erik about an academic paper that he plans to publish…and then things get really intense and they do it.
“Charles,” Erik yawns around his name and rubs at his eyes. “It’s almost 3 in the morning. Come to bed.”
“Just a moment.” Charles mutters distractedly. “I’m almost done.”
“What are you working on, anyway?”
Charles kind of misses the irritation in Erik’s voice and the fact that it’s really more of a rhetorical question than anything.
He spins around in his office chair, grinning excitedly.
“It’s a paper I’m hoping to publish. I’m proposing that we can more easily identify gene mutations using genome wide-linkage analysis and exome sequencing. Exons are responsible for protein translation, see, and I think that our mutations are specific to a protein translation abnormality. So we can take oligonucleotides, which…which can act like probes, and they can hybridize the regions with the mutation, and then we can sequence them and study them, Erik!”
Charles is positively beaming, cheeks flushed and eyes wide and bright even though they’re bloodshot.
Erik thinks he’s stunning like this. He’s never known anyone with so much passion for anything before; so much vision and brightness, and if he didn’t care about protein coding abnormalities before, well…
“Tell me more,” Erik says, breathless and half-hoping Charles doesn’t notice his want, half-hoping he does. “Tell me about exome sequencing.”
And then Charles flushes beautifully, says, “Oh, Erik,” as Erik moves closer, and that smile is impossibly wider.
“An exome is all of a gene’s exons, and the exons have all of the coding information for, uh, genes.” Charles’ voice hitches as Erik’s fingers card through his hair, mussing it. “It’s a more effective method for identifying mutations than whole genome sequencing because…because…”
“Because?” Erik mumbles against Charles’ jaw. His tall frame is bent over the smaller man at an awkward angle, but he can’t bring himself to mind at all.
“Because…because exome sequencing has fewer false positives, and…”
“And…” Erik prompts softly, kissing and sucking at the little hollow behind Charles’ jaw.
“Mhnn,” Charles hums unintelligibly. His fingers are playing at the hem of Erik’s rumpled sleep shirt. “And…it makes it easier to see…disruptions in normal…protein-coding…”
Erik’s sleep and sex addled brain is finding it very hard to focus on exomes and protein coding, especially when Charles licks his lips self-consciously. And then Erik can’t stop looking at that mouth, soft and wet and parted. Something in his chest constricts, and with that, there’s a tendril of heat snaking below his stomach.
Then Charles is leaning forward, gently nudging Erik’s lips open with his tongue, and Erik is running his suddenly overeager hands up Charles’ sides.
“Bed,” he pants into Charles’ mouth. Because Erik is gentlemanly enough to not propose desk sex all over Charles’ first draft.
They almost trip over themselves several times getting there, but then they’re rumpling the sheets for the second time that night.
Charles is still unbelievably prattling on about protein-coding even as he’s completely naked and sitting in Erik’s lap. Erik says “mhm” sometimes like he’s focused on what Charles is saying and not on the fingers he’s got buried inside him; like Charles’ warm, slowly relaxing heat and his saliva-slickened lips and bright eyes are not all he’s thinking about – but, well, they are.
And then, finally, Charles is nothing but the moment. Erik’s fingers coax him open. Suddenly, he stills, spine going rigid, and he says between gasping breaths, “Erik, please, in me, need you inside…”
After that, they’re both anything but coherent. Charles says nothing about exome sequencing or his paper as Erik pushes inside him. And he looks at Charles, his beautiful Charles, limbs splayed out ungracefully on the sheets, dark hair damp and curling around his ears, his rosy sex-flush, smiling up at Erik dopily and saying, “Like that, just like that; that feels…oh,” breaking off with a throaty groan.
Erik reaches between their bodies on impulse for Charles’ stiff arousal. He’s already leaking so much and Erik’s hand slides so easily, and they both know this won’t last long. It can’t, not with exome sequencing as foreplay.
And so lust settles warmly in Erik’s belly for the second time tonight, coiled heavier when Charles surges up for a kiss. Erik’s hand won’t let up. Charles is losing it and he can’t kiss like he normally can. It’s really just carelessly parted lips and wet, loud tonging.
“I’m close,” Charles half whispers, half whines against Erik’s mouth. “I’m so close.”
Erik’s brain is toasted in unadulterated want and love then, so he has no filter.
“Mein Schatz,” he sighs against Charles’ cheek. “Come for me.”
Charles shivers hard then, clutching at Erik’s sides and saying “yes, yes, yes” in a frenzied litany. Erik’s heart stutters and he comes up for air, then, just as Charles slips over that beautiful edge. His body tightens around Erik and he looks up at him through his fluttering eyelids, mouthing his name over and over again, but there’s no sound, because he’s all out of air. Just flushed lips trembling around the name of his love.
Erik comes then, arches into Charles with the delirious need to melt into him, and he knows his mind is thrown wide open but he just doesn’t care.
He slides out of Charles slowly when the aftershocks are just delightful little pulses under his skin. They stay pressed together for a few hours of dozing sleep then, until Charles is out of bed just as the sun comes up.
Erik finds him naked in his office chair, furiously scribbling all over his first draft like he’s just flush with ideas. He could coax Charles back to bed, maybe have another go—
Or make breakfast, because he might be more considerate than he gives himself credit for and maybe because he’s—
“So good to me.” Charles declares, cheeks puffed out with pancake.
Erik kisses his syrup-sticky mouth and has Charles read his paper to him.