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"Do you think me safe?" Charles hears from the dark hallway behind him, Erik's voice from the shadows. He turns, a reflexive reassurance of of course already in his mind, halfway to his lips --
A knife hovers in midair like a fragment of mirror, exactly level with the spot between Charles's eyes. Charles takes an involuntary step back and the knife follows, and Erik's nowhere to be seen.
Charles can hear him, though, even without extending his power. "Do you really," Erik drawls in a tone slower and more studied than calm, "think me safe, Charles?" He takes a step out of the dimness, long black-clad limbs and glinting teeth, but the knife backs Charles up two.
"Erik," Charles starts, his voice wobbling out of true, a knot of fear indeed curllng into existence in the pit of his belly. Erik advances another slow step and the knife dives forward; Charles stumbles backwards, his back hits the wall, and his fingers instinctively fly upwards. "Erik, what the hell --"
The knife flickers between Charles's fingertips and his temple, smooth and cool as its flat pushes Charles's hand away from his head, and Erik reproves him with a little tut-tut-tut that tingles right down his spine. "I don't need to," Charles snaps, his cheeks heating; a squirm of anger tangles into the fear, and an undeniable twist of lust as well, as Erik strides towards him, lanky and powerful.
The knife slides its edge across Charles's wrist, a razorsharp kiss, and he freezes, not even daring to breathe as it nudges into his shirtsleeve and pins shirt and jacket to the wall. He reaches out and finds Erik amused, strolling from the shadows to stand before Charles with arms crossed, impeccable in turtleneck and jeans, dark and gleaming.
The knife gleams too, at the edge of Charles's vision. "I don't need to either," Erik says, demonstrating as the knife pulls from the wall, sliding a flat metal caress across Charles's cheek, as Charles's hand stays pinned by his unmoving jacket button. Charles's other arm is hauled up by wristwatch and jacket button, pressed up beside his head as well, and only then does Erik finally untuck a hand to carefully flatten Charles's fist finger by finger, wearing an infuriating, delicious smirk all the while. "And you could stop me," he tells Charles, the knife fluttering above his head like a deadly butterfly. "You're more dangerous than you admit, Charles Xavier." Erik leans in and presses a kiss to the center of Charles's palm, and the simple warm touch makes Charles shudder from top to toes. "But I, I'm not safe."
Charles stares up into Erik's eyes, translucent and dark with shadows, until the knife moves and he can't see anything else. It dives in towards him and he could reach out, could force Erik to stop and let him down, but he won't; he has to restrain himself much more forcefully than Erik's bindings as the knife flashes towards his throat, stopping short with the very tip resting precisely on his jugular like the first press of a tooth.
It takes two tries for Charles to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth and stammer, "Clearly," and Erik's eyes crinkle with unvoiced laughter. "I never thought you weren't dangerous, Erik," Charles babbles as the knife at his throat vibrates with his racing heartbeat. But I know you'd never hurt me, he thinks to Erik, weighting it more than spoken words.
"So you do," Erik murmurs. His mouth is flat, his eyes bottomless, his gaze unreadable. Charles could push and probe and read his thoughts, but... that would be as unsporting as if this were chess. So, he doesn't. He tips his chin up, facing Erik head-on, reveling in the burn in his pinioned arms, and waits for whatever Erik intends.
The knife scrapes a line down Charles's throat, bright pulsing pain as Charles gasps, and Erik lunges, soothing the sting with a wet flick of tongue. "Christ, " Charles swears, pinned and breathless with Erik's mouth fastened to his throat, Erik's cheek tucked under his chin; Erik laughs against him, into him, long hands bracketing his hips and a smooth cool caress along his cheek, over his lip -- the knife. "Fuck," Charles groans, fighting for stillness and shuddering all the harder, and amused fond desire pours off Erik in waves, shining in Charles's mind like the flying knife does before his eyes.
Erik bites down Charles's throat, surprisingly gently, and Charles clenches his trapped fists and squirms in Erik's grip and sends him desperate images, let me down, undress me, kiss me, cut me. That last shocks them both, Erik's eyelashes flicking his throat as Charles gulps and tries to say, No and Yes simultaneously.
Erik grins against his skin, his teeth pressing like the flat of the knife, curls his tongue in the hollow of Charles's throat and then drops to his knees, not even wincing at the thump. Charles starts to look down -- he tries, and his chin meets cold metal, the knife flicking against his throat. "Chin up," Erik murmurs over Charles's navel, wisps of hot breath through two layers of cloth, and the writhing knot in his guts expands exponentially.
"Oh, you --" Charles yelps, outraged and afire as the knife pricks him just the slightest bit, pressing up with flat and blade until he's stretched vertically against the wall as if on a rack. "Damn it, I --!" Erik undoes everything metal below Charles's waist, belt buckle and zipper all together, dragging his shoes off and then everything else; Charles sees it all fly up into his field of vision and tumble into the darkness, with just enough time to cry out, "My pants!" before all collapses into delighted shock and inchoate noise as Erik sucks him in, cupping his balls in those long elegant fingers.
Instantly overwhelmed, Charles would beat his head against the wall behind him but for the knife hovering at his throat. He has to keep perfectly still, his arms trapped in their sleeves, his feet pressed to the floor, currents of sensation running through all his nerves from the twin centers of Erik's hot mobile mouth on his cock and the cool kiss of the steel poised beneath his chin. And then Erik lifts Charles's leg with his hand, settling it on his shoulder, and then the other, so Charles is half sitting on him and half dangling from the wall, suspended from and supported by nothing but Erik's strength and Erik's power. "Jesus," Charles whimpers fervently, and Erik thinks, Not really, no, with deliberate clarity; Charles gasps a laugh and keeps gasping under the circling rhythm of Erik's tongue and lips, the light insistent press of the knife. "Erik," he shapes with his mouth, not knowing if he speaks or thinks, soaking in Erik's exultation at holding Charles down and drinking him in, causing and owning his fear and his delight. It's a feedback loop, a rising spiral, all the better because Erik knows Charles is reading him, Erik can truly know him, Erik gently squeezes his balls and slides his tongue just so in that spot and Charles's eyes cross as ecstasy takes hold of him, the knot in his belly explosively unraveling, every inch of him wracked with pleasure on the edge of a knife.
He comes down in more than one sense, sliding down the wall, the knife whisking away as Erik catches him and lets him down onto the floor. It's hard beneath them but Charles hardly notices as Erik gentles his tongue and slips off him, as he grabs for Erik with arms and legs and mouth and thought. He hooks his ankles behind Erik's back, burying his hands in sleek hair as their lips meet and press, as he licks into Erik's mouth and caresses his way into his mind, radiating every bit of the sharp-edged delight he's just been given. Can't fuck you on the floor, Erik thinks, flickering with hunger and chagrin, but that won't be necessary, and Charles laughs and feels his laugh tingle Erik's mouth, slides his hands over those lean-muscled shoulders and down the length of that sleek strong back. One hand tight on the firm gorgeous curve of Erik's ass, Charles gets the other inside his already-open jeans, strokes fingertips down his cock and feels his answering shudder from both inside and outside.
What's safe? Charles thinks with Erik's tongue sliding along his, and sends him thoughts of a hundred mouths, a thousand hands, kissing and licking and caressing every inch of him from hairline to shoulders to thighs to toes. Erik stiffens, crying out against Charles's lips, and Charles drinks it down as it's Erik's turn to come apart under unendurable pleasure.
Eventually Erik slumps atop Charles, the surface of his mind hazed over with a fog of satiety, and Charles slumps beneath him in empathic sympathy, tingling faintly with both their orgasms. Eventually something metallic clatters to the floor beside them, and when Charles opens a bleary eye to see it's the knife, he can't help but laugh. "Now that's dangerous," he says, and Erik's eyebrows lift, then his eyelids as he pretends to glare and the knife skitters across the floor to his hand.
But a wave of mingled emotions Charles can't help but absorb turns his eyes up to Erik's again, now dark and warm as the best of night, as Erik brushes a gently rough hand down his throat, checking the skin there and finding it unbroken. "So are we both," he tells Charles, and leans in to kiss him once more.