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The first time they do it Charles goes without them and Erik doesn’t know what he’s missing, except that whatever it is involves a lot of bloody and shite and general clattering from behind the bathroom door and he thinks, it must be important. He’s sat on the end of the bed fixing his cufflinks listening to Charles in the en suite when he reminds Charles with voice raised, “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
Another muffled curse, the faint impression of irritation at the front of his mind, but then Charles unlatches the door and steps out in the floor-length red gown and he could be singing for all Erik knows because all he can hear is the rush of blood in his ears and one line of coherent thought, I really hope he still wants to.
It’s skin-tight and elegant, and conceals Charles’ boxy frame through the magic of hidden seams and well-ended hems. Its sleeves swallow up to his elbow, where they end in two points either side of the joint. The cut reveals his flushed clavicles, the creamy string of pearls around his throat, and little else aside from Charles’ smattering of dark freckles and moles. His bust is subtle, but Erik imagines how the swells will feel filling his palms anyway. Erik can’t even see the lines of neither his brassiere nor shaper beneath the material - silk and chiffon? No, something softer - but he’s too stubborn to commend Howlett his obvious skill.
Erik doesn’t realise how dry his throat is until he swallows.
“I’m doing without lashes,” Charles huffs as he strides across the room. There’s a split up the side of the gown that flashes a pale sliver his stockinged thighs and makes Erik lick his lips. “I’ve glue all over my fingers- oh, where are the gloves? Are you just going to stand there?”
“You’re beautiful,” Erik blurts, and Charles throws a side-eyed glance at him from under the thick, curved wing of his eyeliner, the seamless blend of his silver and black eyeshadow. His stubby lashes are thick with mascara, hastily, agitatedly applied, but he’s still breathtaking and Erik has to make a conscious effort to not let himself get hard in his slacks. “But only if you want to.”
Charles huffs again, and even the way he’s sauntering towards him is making Erik’s palms clammy. Looping his long, muscled arms around Erik’s neck, Charles breathes, “Of course I want to, anything for you.” Erik leans in to kiss his shiny red lips, but Charles pulls away, riffling through the boxes on their bed from Logan’s boutique, swearing in his hunt. “I just cannot be buggered with those lashes.”
“You always love a bit of buggering, though,” Erik comments dryly through a quiet smirk as he steps to where Charles is bent over the bed and he settles behind him, hand on the small of his back, eyes on the delicious swell and curve of his rear. Charles sighs, pulls the silk gloves from a plume of white tissue paper and tugs them up to his thick, bony wrists.
“And you can tell Tony Stark we missed this daft event because you had your cock up my arse.” He turns and pinches Erik’s cheek. “Now help me with my shoes so we can go to his silly gala.”
If they’re a little late because Erik spent more time mouthing along Charles’ calf up to the elastic of his garter, well; even without the false eyelashes Charles is still the most beautiful woman in the ballroom, and from the moment anyone sees him - through the filters Charles curtains over their minds - their tardiness is as easily dismissed as the swell of Charles’ Adam’s apple, which only Erik has the privilege to see.
x
“You’re my new head of engineering,” said Tony Stark, and he shrugged. “People just want to know more about you.”
“I’ve been head for three months,” said Erik, and he thought of Charles. “The press shouldn’t be so invested in me.”
“But they are, and they know you’re married.” Tony nodded at the silver band glinting on Erik’s clenched left fist. “And they want to meet her.”
“It’s not their business,” Erik had spat, and Tony gave him an apologetic look that only lasted about half as long as any of his past girlfriends. “Charles only just got his privacy back after a life of living in tabloids and pap photos, I’m not asking him to do this.”
“Stark’s Engineers: What Are They Hiding?, or how about Stark Industries: Still Keeping Secrets?” Tony said with a raised eyebrow, and he pushed back in his chair. “You’re good, Lehnsherr, so good I wish I’d found you years ago. But Afghanistan is behind us. If we lose business because of the press and their adept abilities at twisting headlines then it hurts all of us.”
Erik licked his lips. “Stark Industries Taking Bribes From Xavier Heir?” Erik continued, and now Tony had levelled a gaze at him. “Wouldn’t that look worse?”
Erik almost thought he’d won; but no, of course no, because Tony Stark is wicked clever and finds solutions in the most round-about of ways. Erik still remembers how Tony had suddenly started to grin.
“Charlotte Lehnsherr is an Oxford girl born and raised in Westchester, New York,” he’d said slowly, explanatory, and Erik’s skin suddenly felt prickly and cold. “How comfortable is Charles in a dress?”
x
Charles had, to Erik’s chagrin, been perfectly fine with the idea. He’d shrugged, eyes still on his book, and Erik caught the motion from where he spied him in the bathroom mirror. “We go to a few balls, a few dinners, and then we go back to our lives. My students will be none the wiser, the press will be none the wiser. It won’t hurt anyone.”
“But surely you don’t want to do this,” Erik had tried after he spat his toothpaste. Charles smirked down at his pages. “If someone found out, looked too closely, this would all blow up and be amounts worse than it is.”
Charles tapped his fingers on his temple. “No one will find out.”
Charles was fine with it; so why was Erik so worried? After a long while staring hardly at his reflection, he agreed, “Only a few events,” and Charles huffed, “Hurry up and come to bed, love.”
That night Charles’ lips had been redder than usual, his wrists slighter where Erik kept them in a grip above his head, his moans breathier and keens lighter as Erik took him apart with his cock. Afterwards, when they were sated and Charles asleep beside him, his lashes seemed longer where they fanned out over the apples of his flushed cheeks. Overcome with something, full like love but hot in his belly like want, Erik edged forwards and pressed two soft kisses on each eyelid. His stubby lashes tickled his bottom lip, but he thought, maybe it wouldn’t be bad, maybe it would even be better than bad, just slightly, and Erik fell asleep sharing Charles’ pillow and thinking of how pretty his ocean-blue eyes would look lined with black.
x
The first event is a gala, something for the success of one department or the other that Erik can’t quite recall, especially not with Charles on his arm. Charles, to his credit, plays the role of wife perfectly, though Erik’s sure it might have something to do with his telepathic influence over the crowd. He hangs on his arm for most of the time they spend circulating the open space of the ballroom, and when he talks his praises are delivered from his cherry red lips in an airy, glass-like voice. And Charles does make Erik’s praises, practically to everyone they come across.
Trust Lehnsherr to win such a beauty, they’ll say, and Charles will sing back, Oh, he takes such good care of me. Where Erik stands quietly at his side, stoic and stern, Charles titters on about his new promotion, how proud he is of his husband, how impressed; how he hopes that what Charles can provide in the home is enough to sate such a determined, ambitious man like Erik Lehnsherr.
When it comes to what Charlotte studied at Oxford, Charles tells them English literature, because not everyone who is rich is daft, and in certain light anything can be found.
“Keep this up and you’ll have to change people’s minds when they take a glance at my crotch,” Erik murmurs hotly into his ear when they find a moment alone. A pearl earring is clasped to the lobe. Erik wonders if he can take it off with his teeth.
“My husband has an approval kink,” Charles shoots back, voice heavy and masculine now, and Erik shivers at the contrast. “Be a good boy and fix me another champagne.”
Charles has always had strikingly beautiful eyes; eyes to swim in, eyes to see the stars in. But framed with black liner they are brighter than the moon’s glittering reflection on a flat ocean, than a supernova exploding out of life and into colour against the vacuous black of space. Through drinks and conversation, Erik always finds himself drawn to them, always seeking them, and they’re perfect and Charles is perfect - entirely, absolutely perfect Charles - but there’s something else that should be there, and Erik licks his lips.
He wonders what Charles might look like with thick, dark lashes fanned over the blush of his cheeks, how big they might make his eyes. How they might feel fluttering against his own cheek, his lips, when he leans up to kiss him as Charles lets him settle between his hips.
They leave the gala early, after pictures have been taken and tipsy business associates chatted with. Tony only sees them together for a brief moment before he’s whisked off to a corner where a tall blond man filling out a blue suit spectacularly waits, but he gives an appreciative nod and a low whistle that makes Erik’s hackles rise and Charles only chuckle.
Afterwards, in the car - because Erik refuses to throw money away on limousines or drivers - Charles pulls off his heels and stretches in his seat. He shaved, Erik realises when he spies the bare flesh hidden under Charles’ arm, and it makes sense that he would but Erik’s just never seen him like this, feminised like this, in a dress with a shaper angling his waist and the white panties Erik knows he’s wearing because he saw Charles putting them on, saw him slide them over his thick thighs that are patchily shaved, too. He thinks of the blade chasing Charles’ skin so intimately, of the way the metal touched him, and he feels jealous.
He wonders if Charles shaved his pubic hair, too. He’ll find out tonight.
“Not if you don’t drive us home,” says Charles knowingly, and he turns in the passenger seat and settles his soft, stockinged feet on Erik’s thigh and crotch, rubbing casually over the fly of Erik’s expensive, tailored trousers.
“I have to drive,” tries Erik, but his voice breaks and he conceals his blush by checking over his shoulder as he merges.
“Then you’d better concentrate,” says Charles, and the stockings whisper as he rubs his feet over the bulge in Erik’s pants. When Erik glances over Charles’ dress is filled out in the front, and it’s obscene and dirty and makes every part of him hidden by the suit hot with sweat.
Home is a mansion that Erik only expected to see on postcards and in picture frames, never from the inside of its grand walls and never from the vantage point of Sharon Xavier’s son’s bed. He wants to get something small, a cottage humble like the one he was raised in not far by so Charles can still teach here, but his mother is proud and Charles is comfortable so he doesn’t push. But now, with Erik in Charles’ lap in the underground carpark necking like the teenagers Charles teaches Erik wishes he lived somewhere a little more private.
Charles’ lipstick is smudged around ridiculously, up his right cheek and almost at his eye. Erik’s almost disappointed: he was looking forward to taking Charles apart piece by piece, wanted to see how that perfect red mouth would stretch around him, wanted to know if it’d make his moans sound sweeter.
“Good we have that dinner in a fortnight,” Charles purrs into his ear before biting it. “Hurry up and get me upstairs like a good boy.”
Erik practically melts the lock to their bedroom, and Charles staggers a little at the intensity that Erik projects his lust. He drops the strappy heels to the floor, backing onto the bed, eyes wild and breaths panted hard through a kiss-swollen mouth. “I’d never guess you’d react so strongly,” he gasps, and Erik throws the suit jacket over the chaise and is partway to unbuttoning his blouse when Charles shakes his head and pushes him onto the bed. “Erik Lehnsherr, Head of Engineering, creaming his pants for his husband in a dress.”
Charles is teasing. Charles is never like this; it’s like he’s a completely different person with his brown curls pinned and coifed, and Erik can’t do anything but sit and let his legs fall open, let Charles kneel between them. He pulls apart Erik’s fly with one hand, and with the other, red gloves straining over his thick fingers, he curls a grip around Erik’s tie and pulls on him til it’s taut. He pumps Erik’s hard cock with the other, and the satin makes Erik breathless.
“You’re being so good to me, Erik,” he whispers, “You got that promotion for me, you take care of me, you buy me lovely dresses.” He tugs on the tie like it’s a leash, but they both know Erik doesn’t need one, they both know Erik would follow Charles anywhere. “You buy me strings of silver and pearls for my neck, thick bangles for my wrists. You must spend a fortune on me. You must really want to keep me at your side.”
Erik has to bite back his moan because even though they keep the entire wing of the mansion it’s normal, it’s a habit, to keep himself quiet, to keep himself subdued, never let loose, never let Charles know what he might like him to do for him. The glove is damp and darkened from his precum, which leaks in a steady stream down over Charles’ knuckles. “You’ll buy me knew gloves, won’t you, Erik? In fact, you’ll buy me a whole new wardrobe, dresses of the latest fashion. Because you’re such a good husband, because you love to make your wife happy.”
Erik comes then, biting on his knuckles, and when he looks down at Charles he’s got come on the red mess of his mouth.
The dress is tented ridiculously now, and Erik hadn’t noticed it before but most of the red on his face is from a blush that bleeds down to his stark collarbones. He peels the dress off, standing there in front of Erik, which is a shame because Erik was looking forward to mouthing over the bulge through the stretchy satin and making Charles break, but right now he’s too boneless to do much of anything, so he lays there while Charles undresses himself, undresses him, and he listens as Charles pads into the en suite.
Keep the makeup on, he wants to call out, but he doesn’t, because now he has to think about what just happened.
It’s only because he’s much too anal about these things that Erik drags himself into the shower before he sleeps, and he watches through the fog and the glass Charles removing his lipstick and liner with wet wipes from a crinkling little packet.
With every swipe a little more of Charles comes back, the Charles Erik knows. They’re silent when Charles slips into the stall, too, and he washes Charles’ hair for him because it’s easier because he’s taller. His hair crunches between his fingers when he massages the shampoo in, the hairspray caking it into perfect curls, sticky mouse still wet behind his ear where he’d gelled his hair to give it volume. Erik never knew Charles could feel like this, wouldn't know his husband to have these textures, and he’s known Charles and his body for a very long time.
Charles shuts his eyes and turns beneath the spray, lets the suds drip down his chest, and the way his eyelashes touch his cheeks just so makes everything in Erik tight again.
They don’t talk about it til they’re in bed, and it’s rather early for the both of them but bed is Erik’s favourite part of the day because it means he gets Charles all to himself for hours on end, so he doesn’t protest as he curls around his husband, and Charles curves into him in turn. “Was before okay?” Charles asks in the dark quiet, and when Erik thinks better than okay it startles him so much that he doesn’t respond for a moment.
“I didn’t know I’d like it so much,” he finally admits, and Charles hums and cards his fingers through Erik’s hair.
“The dirty talk or the dress?” Charles teases.
“I think I understand the rich old men,” Erik says instead, and he finds Charles’ mouth in the dark by way of instinct and kisses him sweetly good night. “I know why they like their trophy wives.”
x
Charles goes back to being his quiet clever self, and Erik refuses to meet Tony Stark’s knowing looks. He’s forced to acknowledge him however when, a few days later, Tony throws a newspaper in his face. “Look here, the gossip columns are all over you,” he says, and Erik eyes the tabloid over his glasses and down his nose.
“So they’re satisfied,” but Erik knows from Charles that they never will be.
Tony shrugs. “Until the dinner. Remember, formal, and you can never wear a dress twice.” He practically sings as he walks out.
Erik screws the newspaper in his fist and remembers Charles doesn’t like smoking.
x
When he comes home he finds Charles in the sitting-turned-living room of their wing, cold forgotten tea next to his laptop where it’s propped up by textbooks. Next to him are a slew of different looking bottles and jars and pens, and filling the room is the sweet voice of a girl as she instructs.
Charles leans up for a kiss as Erik skirts the couch, but keeps his eyes on the tutorial. When Erik looks at him he finds a series of beige and tan and brown lines drawn all over his face in cream, a small sponge in one hand. Erik nods at the video. “Practicing?”
Charles hums, and his movements mimic the girl in the video as he blends the makeup tracing the sponge along his nose, his jaw. “I want to be perfect for you,” he murmurs, and Erik hopes it isn’t obvious that he’s breathing harder now.
“I love you the way you are.” His fringe is pinned back off his forehead, and his cardigan is frumpy and incongruous with the expensive makeup around him, but Erik loves him, always.
“This is just for fun.”
Erik watches him for a while, watches him line his eyelids. He blinks too often out of nervous habit, and he curses beneath his breath, and his eyelid has a number of black vertical streaks over it, but Erik can’t stop looking.
It’s just for fun. Just a secret they share. Charles could just go to the dinner as he is and convince the party that they see a beautiful woman, but this is just for fun, for them, for Erik. Erik swallows, and watches the stick of red lipstick colouring his mouth with a strange enviousness.
“Say it,” says Charles. The bristles of his mascara chase his lashes, painting them gluggily with inky black.
“I just wondered,” begins Erik, and he pushes on because Charles is his husband and he loves him, “If you’d want to try the lashes again.”
Saying it feels like he’s just told his deepest secret. Charles’ presence in his mind is a soft swell, calming. The girl titters on behind it. “There’s sure to be a video on applying them somewhere,” Charles decides, and the relief in Erik is strange and makes him feel guilty, for some reason.
Charles grins at him and he has lipstick on his teeth and Erik laughs. “Let me practice on you, I’m getting stubbly and it just makes this a big mess.”
“I like your stubble,” compliments Erik and he swipes his thumb over Charles’ cheek; Charles catches it in his teeth and climbs into Erik’s lap, giggling as he uncaps his eyeliner.
x
The night of the dinner Charles spends the entire day in the bathroom with the door shut and a stereo crackling some outdated record that only Charles Xavier could love. Several times Erik comes to the door, stands there a moment with the words on his lips but he never makes it further than brushing his powers over the latch before he’s turning back and staring at the three-piece laid out on their bed.
Next to it is a long velvet gown a colour caught between navy and purple. It shimmers in the light, like stars in the night, and beside it is a black corset, stockings and underwear.
Only a few more nights of this and then everything will go back to normal. Everything will go back to how it was when Charles wore cardigans and slacks and he didn’t spend his free afternoons watching pretty, young girls teaching how to apply their pretty, expensive makeup. When they make love Erik will stop wondering about how Charles might look in a summer dress, or a pencil skirt, or stockings and stilettos. He’ll forget this part of him exists, and Charles will, too, and everything will be normal.
Charles opens the bathroom door and a plume of sweet steam billows out into their bedroom. He’s naked, and he rests his chin on Erik’s shoulder. “Crossdressing isn’t an uncommon kink, darling,” he purrs. “It’s not even dirty; it’s practically vanilla.”
“But do you enjoy it?”
“I enjoy it more than I think you’d like to know.”
Erik gives the dress a crooked smile. “And the lashes?"
Charles huffs right in his ear and his breath makes him shiver. “Annoying, but they’re on. Look.”
So Erik does, and Charles’ eyes are prettier than he’d ever thought they could be, and Charles is beautiful, naked and beautiful, and something in Erik’s chest swells.
His false lashes are thick but not to a ridiculous extent, and they’re long but not so long that it’s obvious they aren’t real, and they frame his eyes perfectly accompanied by the liner, the shadow. He blinks slowly up at Erik, and Erik suddenly feels like he wants to hide.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” says Charles as he takes Erik’s hand, thumb smoothing over knuckles. “Just look at me.”
“Can I kiss you instead?” asks Erik, but Charles shakes his head.
“This lipstick took much too long to apply for you to go ruin it. But here, another type of kiss.”
He pushes onto his toes and his hands secure themselves on Erik’s shoulders. He leans forward, and Erik stays very still, and then Charles angles his face and blinks rapidly and the lashes brush his cheek and they’re soft, softer than Erik would have thought, and he has to swallow to keep a keen from escaping.
“If you think that was soft touch me,” Charles laughs as he pulls back. Erik’s hands come to his arms, run up and down them a course, smooth over the pouch of his belly. “Shaving is such a hassle, but I feel so slippery.”
“Like a seal,” Erik jokes, and they both fall into laughter.
He helps Charles tighten the corset, he slips the stockings over his feet and smooth legs, and then Charles is Charlotte and she flirts and thinks louder than Charles would normally do. Charlotte is a slut, and she opens her legs and lets Erik see her cock wrapped in the black silk panties, and then she’s standing and turning and ignoring him, leaving him kneeling on the floor at her heeled feet.
“Don’t startle people at dinner with your dick,” Charles laughs, stepping into the gown, and Erik comes up much too close and fixes the zip with his powers. “I’d hate to put people off their appetite.”
“As long as you don’t lose yours,” Erik murmurs into Charles’ neck. He’d doused himself in perfume, and Erik wishes more than anything he could smell his musk, his natural scent.
They stand in front of the mirror and Erik rubs himself against Charles’ backside. The gown has two loops for sleeves, and opens Charles’ shoulders and clavicles to the air. The corset pulls him in places and fills him out in others, and the skin-tight dress gives him the illusion of hips, of a full rear, and the corset pads two small breasts on his chest. Erik drags his thumbs over where Charles’ nipples should be. “A mermaid dress,” he murmurs, and he won’t thank Logan, doesn’t even want to think of the man knowing Charles’ body well enough to make clothes for it, so he settles for palming at Charles’ hip and watching the front of the dress fill out.
“Stop it,” hisses Charles, but he doesn’t mean it, and when he turns his head a curl falls against Erik’s lips. His opal earring dangles by his chin. “You’ll stretch the dress.”
At dinner Erik doesn’t refrain from thinking very loudly and very boorishly how bored he is and how much he’d rather be at home with Charles’ stockinged knees on either side of his head. Charles, of course, of course of course, does not even bat a heavily lashed eyelid at him, just continues on about how Erik bought me these earrings, aren’t they lovely (which he had) and he just took me over to Europe for a holiday to see his family (which they did). Erik spends half the time he talks watching his eyes instead, mesmerised by the fan of the lashes, the gentle way they brush his cheeks when he blinks slowly. Often he lets his eyes sit half-lidded, and the lashes cast a demure little shadow and his gaze starts something hot in Erik’s chest.
During the middle of the main course, Charles thinks loudly, they think I’m the perfect trophy wife. Everyone is envious of you. Erik is too hard to come up with a reply, and then Charles’ hand finds his and tangles their fingers beneath the tablecloth, and Charles is grinning and laughing at some stupid joke and he’s pushing their hands against Erik’s crotch and he thinks, touch yourself, and so in retaliation Erik thinks about how he’d love to ruin Charles’ skin with hickeys, how he’d like to have his stockinged thighs around his head, how he wants to see his come webbing Charles’ thick lashes.
You can’t get hard here, he thinks, and he can feel Charles’ indignation, his embarrassment, because Charles is hard and he can’t hide it in a dress. So Charles spends the rest of the dinner humming and ahhing breathily, subdued in his arousal and Erik would think it a victory but he knows what’s going to happen when they get home.
When they do Charles pushes him against the bedroom door, and he leans in and bites his lips and holds him with his hand on his throat, and Erik pushes back, kissing his sticky red lips and licking into his mouth and grinding their fronts together. “You act so very haughty, but you are so very easy to rile,” Erik hisses against his mouth, and Charles moans and works on his tux. “It’s because I spoil you too much. You’re corrupted.” Charles’ eyes flutter shut and the way the lashes move heavily just makes Erik harder.
“You take care of me, like a good husband,” whispers Charles, but the act is slipping and so is the dress, and Erik begins his assault on Charles’ bared chest, begins to bite around a flushed nipple.
Every part of Charles is soft, his skin like velvet, or cream, and Erik just wants to lick and bite and ruin each part of him. He tastes like lavender and rose, and slightly tangy in places from the moisturisers and lotions, but that just means he has to find another place to settle his mouth and it isn’t long before the dress is on the floor and Charles’ thighs are quivering in their stockings and garters, and Erik’s mouth finds a perfect spot right on Charles’ cock.
“Say it,” he spits, growling as he sucks a mark into the hollow junction of his thigh and groin, and he thinks Charles is sobbing in pleasure. His makeup is smudged, a mess, but to Erik it’s unbelievably hot, especially because those fucking lashes are still making his eyes pop and letting him see everything in Charles like he’s the telepath. Say it.
“I love you because you’re rich,” he cries, and Erik holds his hips so firmly they’ll be bruised in the morning. “I love you for your cock.”
“I love you because you’re powerful.”
“I love you for your success.”
Charles is babbling, breathless, and his entire body is trembling in pleasure. Is Erik sick for liking this? Are they both sick for liking this?
“I love it when you show me off.”
“I love being your trophy wife.”
After, Erik carries Charles into the bathroom and he turns on the taps with his powers. Charles is all thick muscle and stocky frame but Erik lifts him relatively easily, and he murmurs quietly into Charles’ ear, things like I love you so much, and you’re so beautiful, and when the bath is full he settles Charles in it and begins to work away his makeup with a moist wipe.
“Leave the lashes on,” Charles requests, voice hoarse from his moaning and keening, and Erik nods and is relieved. He slots in behind Charles in the bath, and Charles tilts his head back and gives him butterfly kisses along his jaw.
His hands drift up to Charles’ cheeks, but Charles shakes his head and pulls them away. “I’ve got stubble, I… I’m not Charlotte.”
“I love your stubble. I love Charles.” Don’t forget that.
I won’t. “Who knew your promotion would lead us here.”
“Don’t mention Stark when we’re like this,” Erik grouses, and when Charles laughs a clear little laugh that vibrates to Erik’s chest and tilts his head back, revealing the line of his throat, his eyelashes flutter against his pink cheeks and Erik doesn’t hesitate from leaning down and kissing his shut eyes, relishing the way the long, soft strands tickle his lip.