|
Desperate Memories
Lie Author: Alara
Rogers sweetheart sweetheart are you fast
asleep The mansion was silent and dark with 3 am loneliness. Charles had knocked off and gone to bed hours ago, but Erik had wanted to try "just one more thing"-- which had led to another thing, and another thing, as the device he and Charles were building stubbornly refused to do what he wanted it to do. He couldn't test it without Charles-- only a telepath would be able to use the device when it was done, a limitation that irked Erik-- but at the very least energy should flow through the right places and with the right frequencies when he plugged it in. His eyes burned and his head hurt. Cerebro had been frustrating him and Charles for weeks now. He'd thought perhaps he'd had a brilliant idea for solving their problems and if he just put a few minutes of work into it he could present Charles with a half-done prototype to test in the morning. This hadn't happened. Instead the five cups of coffee he'd had today were finally wearing off, he had no finished product, he was cold and lonely and he'd completely missed his chance to have sex tonight. Charles was too practical to wait up for three hours; he had too many bouts with insomnia of his own to push his sleeping schedule off kilter, so when he said he was going to bed, he meant it. Erik had hoped to be done quickly and get to bed before Charles fell asleep. That hadn't happened either. Well. He stood up, feeling joints creak in a way that a 28-year-old man's joints should not be creaking. Arthritis was acting up again; New York's climate was not good for Erik's ancient injuries. He didn't complain about it. Charles would dearly love to have aches in his knees. For all that he had suffered, all the horrors he'd witnessed and been forced to endure, at the very least Erik's body worked more or less right. He had no right to complain. It would have been awfully nice to get a backrub to deal with some of the problem, though. Or, well, sex. Orgasms dealt with a wide variety of pain. On the other hand it had been his decision to stay up much later than Charles, so he really had no right to complain about that either. His knees would like it if he took the elevator. His general fitness levels would prefer him to take the stairs. Erik decided both of them could go to hell. Instead of heading deeper into the house to the staircase or the elevator, he went to the large north-facing window of his workroom, summoned it open by its steel latch and the ironworks he'd built to protect it, and stepped outside into the night. Air was damp and cold on his skin. He summoned power, surrounding himself with warmth, with the crackling sound of force and the sweet smell of ozone and the blanketing effect, protected from the world. Shielded. With a thought he directed the power, repelling himself from the ground. What was the point to living at a mansion that was surrounded by an iron fence and thick trees, tucked away from any prying human eyes, if one couldn't step out one's window and fly every so often? The master bedroom was east-facing. Charles loved sunrise despite the fact that he usually saw it from being up all night. Erik propelled himself around the house, a little wobbly-- need more flying time, I'm out of practice-- and called the power he needed to open the windows to Charles' bedroom. (Two years of sharing, and it was still Charles' bedroom. Charles' house, Charles' country, Charles' dreams. Erik wasn't entirely sure this would ever change.) Once Charles finally got to sleep he could sleep through anything. He didn't stir as moonlight and air streamed in through his bedroom window. Erik landed softly, quieting the buzz of his power, and looked down at Charles. His heart hurt. Charles looked so peaceful, so strong and beautiful and secure, sleeping as if he hadn't a care in the world. Which was, of course, not true. Charles worried about a lot of things, many of them the same things Erik worried about. But when he slept, he truly slept, putting those cares aside for another day. Erik often wished he shared that talent. He had had very few nights without nightmares since the horrible day he was dragged away from his parents and into a hell of human devise, and on most of those nights, he'd either been fucked senseless or dead drunk. Sometimes both. He sat on the edge of the bed. Charles' peace hurt him because it wasn't true. There were so many horrors lurking out there, waiting to destroy Charles and himself. In this country no one would drag him off for being a Jew, or so Charles had assured him ten years ago and thus far it seemed to be true. He wasn't at all sanguine that if the world at large knew what he and Charles did together in this room the same would be true. Homosexuality was still classified as a disease-- Charles, a psychiatrist, always snorted at that and complained that people let their biases rule them-- and while Charles was independently wealthy, it would probably destroy his career as a psychiatrist and his ambition to open a school to train young mutants, once they got Cerebro finished and were able to find some. Perhaps they wouldn't be rounded up and thrown into death camps to be spat upon by even the other inmates, but their ability to function in society would be destroyed. And Erik was absolutely positive that if the government of the United States knew what he could do with magnetism or what Charles could do with the human mind, a quick death would be the best outcome the two of them could hope for. He closed his eyes, remembering. Charles didn't know. Not really, truly know. Charles had promised never to read his mind unless Erik gave permission, a promise Erik had demanded from him as much for Charles' protection as for Erik's privacy. Charles was so innocent, so full of faith in the best of humanity. He truly believed people were at heart good and reasonable, despite being able to see their hearts and minds. On his good days Erik thought this must be because Charles could see something invisible to his own eyes, and hoped desperately that Charles' dream could come true; on bad days he knew it was because Charles was naïve and deluded. Charles had never seen his parents dragged away before his eyes, had never been tied to a table with a coal brazier strapped to his naked stomach to see if he could work the buckle open before the red-hot brazier burned through his skin, had never been starved for two weeks and then subjected to electric shock, had never been threatened with being burned alive if he didn't perform for his captors. No. He didn't want to remember this. He didn't want to think about what the American government would do to him and Charles if they learned of their mutant abilities. He wanted to stop thinking about anything. He wanted to make love to Charles and blot out the memories with a hard climax and fall into unconsciousness and never ever dream. But he wasn't going to get what he wanted, since he certainly wasn't selfish enough to wake Charles. "Unless you think about it really, really loudly," Charles mumbled. Erik jerked, startled. "How long have you been awake?" Charles cracked one eye barely open. "Not really awake. Not really asleep either. I was lonely." "You should have called to me! I'd have come to bed sooner had I known you couldn't sleep!" Charles smiled sleepily. "The work's important. I've left you lonely enough nights of my own." "You are also important, Charles. Being with you is important to me." "And to me. But the work is vital. Besides, you're here now." He reached out from under the covers, pushing them aside to put a hand on Erik's leg. As always, Erik marveled at Charles' body. His skin was smooth, mostly hairless-- oh, he had eyebrows and eyelashes and pubic hair, but there was no hair on his chest or his arms and very very little on his head. It made him look older than he was, but his upper body didn't lie-- Charles' arms and chest would not have been out of place on a Greek god. All the working out in the world could never make Erik look like that, which, of course, had to do with the fact that everything he could do with his legs Charles had to do with his arms. Erik reached out and ran a light hand down his lover's chest. As he slid his fingers over the skin of Charles' abdomen just above the groin, Charles groaned. "Yes, I do seem to be here now, don't I." "Come here." Charles sat up, wrapped one arm around Erik, and dragged him down onto the bed. "Now that you've woken me up, I feel it only fair that you help me get back to sleep." "Gladly." They kissed, and Erik used his powers to undo the metal seams he had running through all of his clothing, allowing his shirt and pants to part neatly and float off his body. Charles, of course, was already naked from the waist up, and what was below the waist unfortunately didn't matter so much. Erik tilted back at a slight angle so he could reach Charles' chest with his arm, and played with Charles' nipples, licking his fingers and then running them down Charles' abdomen. The death of sensation below his waist had eroticized much of what lay above; Charles moaned. "Oh, god, Erik. Help me get your underpants off. I need you." Awkwardly Erik managed to work one side of the underpants off, with Charles working on the other side. He gasped as Charles' fingers brushed lightly against his erection, then buried his mouth against Charles' again as his lover's hand caressed his penis. Charles' other hand played with his hair-- Charles found his hair fascinating, for reasons that seemed fairly obvious, but Erik liked to have his scalp stroked and didn't mind Charles' fetish for his hair at all. He pinched Charles' nipple just a little bit, rubbing it between his fingers. For a moment he raised his head, looking into his lover's eyes. Charles' eyes were closed, his head fallen back, obviously lost in the sensation. The tenderness and protectiveness and love he'd felt before, looking down at Charles' sleeping form, came back, twisting his heart so hard it was like a stabbing pain. The world would try so hard to destroy them. Charles opened his eyes, apparently noticing Erik's sudden surge of emotion. "Erik, it's all right," he whispered. "It's going to be all right. None of it will happen." Charles didn't even know what "it" was except in the most general of senses. His faith wasn't reassurring. Desperate to drive the fears out, Erik slid down, turning his body around so he was more or less facing Charles' useless undercover legs, and began kissing Charles on the skin of his abdomen, sucking on it, just at the spot where Charles' broken nervous system had decided to put the sexual sensations his penis could no longer feel. Charles cried out. Strong arms pulled Erik's legs close, and he felt Charles' lips and tongue caress his own penis, teasing him. Two could play that game. He used a combination of his arms and his powers to lift Charles' body just enough that he could stroke Charles' back, right above the break point. The nerves there were so excruciatingly sensitive that Charles couldn't even be touched there without pain except when he was aroused, when his brain would reinterpret the sensation as pleasure. Charles rolled onto his side, losing the use of one arm but holding tightly to Erik's body with the other, giving Erik free access to both suck on his smooth belly and rub the sensitive spot on his back. He felt Charles' mouth finally close around his penis, drawing him in to wet warmth. It was so damnably good. Erik relaxed the barriers Charles had taught him to place around his mind, letting Charles feel what he felt. Although Charles could experience wonderfully arousing sensations, the fact that the actual nerves to his groin had been cut off forever meant that he couldn't actually achieve a climax. The arousal could build and build but could never actually release-- unless he was touching Erik's mind at the moment of Erik's orgasm, feeling what he felt. It was something of a violation of his privacy, and it made it awkward if his mind drifted during sex, but Charles had never objected to anything he had thought at moments like this, and it was a small thing to do to let the man he loved have the same satisfaction he enjoyed. Charles' fingers stroked his buttocks, pulling at them to take more of Erik into his mouth. It was wonderful. Until Charles' fingers probed just a little bit too close to Erik's anus and the sensation evoked a fleeting, painful memory. Erik's whole body stiffened. He lifted his head to tell Charles to stop that, but Charles already had. //Erik? Are you all right?// "I'm fine." He couldn't respond mentally, not with that memory still awake in his head. He didn't want Charles to see that. "I'd just rather you didn't do that." //How about this instead?// Charles swirled his tongue around Erik's penis, inside his mouth. Erik gasped. "Much better. Oh yes, Charles. Do more of that." He pressed his head into Charles' stomach again and swirled his own tongue against the warm soft skin, hard. Charles' moans were muffled by Erik's body against his, driving out the unpleasant memory, and Erik was able to relax enough to let Charles touch his mind again. Charles' mouth was driving him wild. Erik breathed hard and raggedly through his nose, blowing air onto skin his mouth was wetting. He could hear Charles gasping with pleasure, and for a moment, the thought that Charles could feel every sensation he felt as well as the things Erik was doing to him, that every part of him was giving Charles pleasure, sent a surge of ecstasy through him. It was too much. Erik groaned, orgasm washing over him, and felt Charles' upper body writhe against his in response, the same pleasure surging through both of them like an electric current. He turned himself around to lay in Charles' arms, his own arm around his love's shoulders, preferring to enjoy the afterglow next to Charles' face rather than anywhere else. "I love you, you know," Charles murmured. After sex was the only time Charles ever said that. It was as if he took it for granted that Erik knew all the rest of the time. Erik sighed. As the pleasure ebbed, it brought in its wake melancholy. The very fact that he was happy, that he was overwhelmed with love for Charles, meant that sooner or later something terrible would happen and destroy them. "I do. And I love you," he whispered back, wishing it felt more like an endearment and less like a pronouncement of their inevitable doom. But he would not inflict these feelings on Charles just as the telepath was about to sleep. The last thing he wanted was for Charles to share his nightmares. He made an effort to put the worrisome thoughts out of his head, and grabbed the blanket, pulling it up over them. Charles turned onto his side, and Erik wrapped an arm around his waist, spooning against him, as if the protective gesture of the position would allow him to protect Charles from his own thoughts. "Sleep well, Charles." "And you too, Erik." "I hope so," he said softly. (It was like a horror movie, except that he couldn't move his chair to go get popcorn, couldn't stop watching. Like a nightmare, except he could lucid-dream his way out of his own nightmares. And other people's nightmares didn't usually pull him in. His subconscious mind had reached out to this mind, this person, and now he was trapped.)
The boy was small, and weak, and so very hungry. He had tried and tried to make the power come, as the doctor had ordered, but it was gone. Paper clips barely twitched at the strongest force he could muster. They had burned him and cut him and frozen him and starved him, and now the power had deserted him. "Fucking worthless Jew brat," the doctor said, when he couldn't lift a steel disc. "I'll figure out how you do that one way or another." He gestured to the guard that usually watched the boy. "Put him in his cell for the night; I need to get dinner. Tomorrow I think we'll try vivisection." Fear surged through the boy, drying his mouth and making his muscles weak. "No, please!" he begged. "I'll do better, I will, I'm sorry--" The doctor backhanded him across the mouth. "You don't talk to me, Jew swine," he said almost conversationally. To the guard he said "Hurry up and get him out of here." The boy tried to struggle, terrified. The guard slashed at him with a whip until he stopped resisting, then grabbed him, looped rope around his neck and dragged him off. Though the boy was sick and weak and dizzy, he struggled to keep up with the guard so he wouldn't be choked. The guards who dealt with him couldn't carry metal guns, but they had found creative ways to assert their power over him anyway. Outside the building, in the bitter cold of winter, there was a wooden box on the bare dirt, a cube barely 4 feet across. The guard threw him into it and slammed the door closed. This had been his home for weeks now. He couldn't stand or stretch his entire body out anywhere in the box. Because it had no steel or iron in it, unlike the barracks or the cells in Experiments Block, he hadn't been able to free himself from it even when he had his powers. The boy curled into himself and sobbed with terror. He had fought so long to stay alive when so many others in Experiments Block had been killed and gone up the chimneys, but he had no more resources left to fight with. Tomorrow he was going to die.
(I don't want to see this, Charles thought, and tried to pull out of the memory, but he was too deeply asleep and the memory too strong)
It was night. The boy had stopped crying and was huddled in a ball in the cold box, dully waiting for morning, to die. Then the door opened and a man peered in. "Hey, kid. Jew boy. You alive in there?" In the dark he couldn't see the man's face, but he recognized the voice. It was one of the trusties, the men who were prisoners themselves but given the task of overseeing the lower prisoners. In the Nazis' hierarchy, a Polish Christian who had gone to prison for some heinous crime was considered worthy to oversee and abuse law-abiding Jews. "Yes," he said hoarsely. "Listen, you want to be alive tomorrow? I can smuggle you out, get you into Canada. I'll tell Dr. Mengele you broke out tonight and they had your body up the chimney before anyone realized you were scheduled for dissection. He won't bother to look for you, he's got a new pair of twins to play with." Canada! The man didn't mean the country, but the warehouse where the goods brought in by the victims were processed. People who worked in Canada could get their hands on plenty of goods to "organize", or trade on the black market for food and shoelaces and other necessities. It would be incredible good fortune to get into Canada. "Why?" Erik asked hoarsely. "Because I like you, Jew boy. You're a nice-looking kid for a Jew, and I think there's a favor or two you can do me." He could see the moonlight glittering off the man's broad smile. It was all he could see of the man in the dark. Erik didn't question any further. Anything was better than being vivisected. He crawled out of his wooden box. "Yes. Please. Thank you, sir." "Come on." The trusty took Erik's arm and led him back into Experiments Block. Erik trembled, but had to trust his benefactor-- it wasn't as if he had any alternatives. The man guided him to a deserted examination room, pushed him in and followed, and then shut the door behind them. "Here we go, a little privacy," the man said. "Take off your clothes." Did the man want to examine him before rescuing him? Was he actually a medically trained trusty? It was certainly possible, since he worked in Experiments Block. Erik stripped, shivering. The block was heated for the benefit of the scientists who worked here, but the bitter cold of his unheated wooden cube had sunk deep into his bones. "Nice kid," the man said approvingly, and ran his hand over Erik's shaved head. "Nice little Jew. Now up on the table and lie on your stomach." Erik obeyed. He was so used to invasive medical examinations that when he felt hands running over his buttocks, he did nothing except shudder slightly. Only when he felt the man's weight lowering onto his body did he twist his head to see what was happening. The man's pants were down. Erik jerked up, trying to escape. "No!" "Shut up. You want to die?" the trusty asked, shoving him down again. "Please, sir! I don't want to be a bum boy!" He knew, now, what the trusty wanted of him, and he knew also how much everyone else despised the men and boys who let others use their bodies like that. "Dr. Mengele's going to vivisect you, Jew dog. You know what that means? Cut your brain open while you're still alive to feel it. Now you wanna give me a little fun, or you want to die?" He didn't want to die. Erik stopped struggling, going limp with resignation and despair. There was no way to escape this awful thing if he wanted to live. The pain as he was penetrated was horrible, and he screamed. The trusty grabbed his head and slammed it against the table. "Shut up! If we're caught doing this it's up the chimney for both of us!" Erik didn't scream again. Tears ran from his eyes, but he didn't dare sob. The man grunted and pushed faster and it felt like he was being torn apart. And then the man groaned and pulled out, climbing off him. "That wasn't bad. You could move a little, but I guess you'll learn. Get your clothes back on." He didn't think he could move, the pain inside him was so awful. But he had to. Slowly Erik managed to get to his feet. Something was running down his leg from inside him, warm and wet, like diarrhea. When he looked at it it was mostly white, laced with the red of his blood. He pulled on his pants so no one else could see, and struggled into his shirt. "Come on. I'll take you to the barracks for the Canada workers. I can't keep you in my quarters, the doctor might actually look there, but I'll be back in a few days and we can enjoy ourselves, right?" He smacked Erik's buttocks, not hard, but after what had just happened being touched there at all made Erik sick. He shuddered. The trusty ignored his reaction. "Maybe I'll even bring you a little present. Pretty little Jew whore like you, bet you'd like a present." It was going to happen again. It was going to happen as many times as the man wanted, or he could always tell the doctor and Erik would end up being cut open while he was still alive. Erik managed not to cry while he was still with the trusty. After the man shoved him into the overcrowded barracks, he managed to find a spot under a bunk, too small and narrow for an adult man and therefore unoccupied, where he curled up very, very small and sobbed. One of the man on the bunk above his head banged his wooden shoe against the bunk. "Shut the fuck up!" He put his arm in his mouth to muffle his sobs, but he didn't stop. And Charles woke up. He was gasping, body covered with sweat. Immediately he rolled over to look at Erik. Erik had curled into himself as he had in the dream, and was whimpering faintly. "Erik. Erik, wake up. I'm here. You're safe." He sat up, pulling Erik onto his lap. Erik's eyes had opened, and he was looking around himself, disoriented. "Was--?" "You're safe. It was a nightmare. It's not happening, it will never happen again. You're with me now, in America. You're safe." Erik closed his eyes, shuddering. He lay against Charles' lap, clinging to his senseless legs and warm chest. Charles stroked Erik's hair. "You're safe now. It's all right. It's over and in the past." After a few minutes, Erik's shuddering stopped, and he rolled over. "You were in my mind," he said flatly. "I was sharing your dream while I was asleep. Normally when that happens it's a run of the mill nightmare and I can break myself out of it. You were reliving a memory and I couldn't break free." "You-- saw that? All of that?" "I'm sorry. Believe me, for both of our sakes I wish I hadn't. I don't like violating your privacy. But I couldn't break free of your mind." Erik stared at the ceiling. "So now you know," he said, still in the flat, toneless voice. "You're sleeping with a whore, Charles, are you glad to know that?" "What?" Charles stared down at him in disbelief. "Erik, you are not a whore. You were raped." "That time. I could have refused him, other times. I didn't." He still did not look at Charles, and his mind was completely closed now. "I wanted to work in Canada. And he gave me food. So I was a whore." "No. You were forced, Erik. He held your life in his hands. And what would it matter if you were? Actual prostitutes don't generally go into that life because they love to be degraded. They do it because someone beat them and forced them into it, or tethered them with drugs, or their families tortured them until they thought even sex with strangers was preferable. There is no shame in doing what you needed to to survive." "Isn't there?" He sat up. "Do you know how long I tried to convince myself I couldn't possibly love you, because I didn't want to be what I had been there, I didn't want to be what my patron was? Do you know how that made me feel about my desires, when I came to America and woke up as a man and found that I felt things for other men? I whored for a man in the camps and now I'm a queer. Do you know what it took me to get past that? To love you?" "Yes, I do. I was there. I saw how hard it was for you-- though I never did know why. I wish you'd told me; there are a few scathing things I said to you on the subject of bigotry against homosexuals I'd have never said if I'd known what had happened to you." "How could you possibly have respected me if you'd known?" Erik said, anguished. "Maybe it's all right for you now that we've been together two years. But when we first met? Even when we had known each other a few years? It took me eight years to push those memories down far enough that I could love a man. How could it take you less time to accept them?" "Erik... I cannot even imagine what you went through. Aside from brief glimpses of your memories, I cannot conceive of such inhumanity. I would never blame you for anything you did to survive in that place. If you endured being raped on a regular basis by someone who pretended his lust was affection and who made it possible for you to stay alive, how could I possibly ever judge you for that?" He reached out. "Come here. Please." Reluctantly, stiffly, Erik went into his arms. "I didn't want you to know I was that weak," he whispered. "I didn't think you could love someone who, who let himself be degraded like that." "Can you love someone who let his stepfather throw him down the stairs and break his back?" Charles said, eyebrows arching. "Things happen to us when we're children, and we can't fight them. We can't. I blamed myself for what my stepfather did to my mother. I thought I could protect her. I tried, and I got my back broken for my troubles, and it didn't help my mother at all-- it might even have contributed to her early death. Maybe if she hadn't been under such stress, blaming herself for what had happened to me, she could have fought her illness better." He held Erik tightly, rocking slightly. "We're men now, and we're able to protect ourselves well enough that what we do, we do by choice. But I will never blame you for what you did as a young man to stay alive. Any more than I hope you would blame me for getting my back broken when I was 14." "Perhaps," Erik whispered. "Perhaps you're right." "Of course I'm right. I'm always right, you know." Erik's laugh was almost a bark of surprise. "Except when you're completely wrong, and a fool to boot," he said affectionately. "Which only happens in your imagination," Charles retorted, laughing. He leaned back against the headboard. "It's 6 am. We'll never be able to get up and go to work tomorrow. Why don't I cancel my appointments and you call in sick and we'll go do something fun? Sleep late, go down to Broadway and watch a play. Take in a concert somewhere. Something fun." "We do have Cerebro to work on." "And it's going to be there the day after tomorrow. The work's going slowly enough that I don't think one day will make a crucial difference. We need to spend more time together outside of work." "Perhaps," Erik allowed. He smiled slightly. "It sounds delightful, actually." They sat like that for a few minutes, Charles leaning back against the headboard and Erik leaning against Charles. "You do know," Erik said finally, "that I would never have recovered so much as I have without you. I owe everything to you." "Don't forget how much I owe you. Learning that there was such a thing as mutants and I wasn't simply going insane hearing voices might have saved my sanity." "I mean it. I don't know what I would be without you, but I doubt very much it would be what I am. You saved me, Charles." "I loved you. From the moment I saw you. If I saved you, it was only because every part of me saw in you someone shining, someone worth saving." "And because you are on a quest to save the world." "That, too. But mostly because I love you." "It truly means nothing to you? What-- what you saw?" "Of course it doesn't mean nothing. It means someone I love suffered something horrible, and non-violent beliefs or no, if I met that man today I think he would wake up every morning believing that rats are chewing his liver. But does it mean I think less of you? That I would reject you or think of you as weak? No. It doesn't. Nothing could." His arm tightened slightly around Erik. "No matter what you have done, no matter what you ever do, I will always love you." "I have done nothing to deserve you," Erik whispered. "Except to be who you are." "Someday perhaps you can convince me of that," Erik said, smiling sadly. He turned his body toward Charles, hugging him tightly for a moment. "Day off tomorrow or no, we still must sleep." "Of course." Erik helped Charles to lay back down-- not that Charles could not have managed without him, but scooting his body forward was more difficult without the use of his legs, and when Erik was around he generally helped with small things like that-- and the two snuggled against each other again. This time, there were no nightmares. The End Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to their owners/creators/copyright holders. This fan-written fiction intends no infringement on any copyrights. |
| .:home:. .:stories:. .:FAQ:. .:questions:. |