Shell
Charles is beginning to wonder where all the spoons are going.
When he moved into the apartment, he is sure that there was a drawer full of spoons. He's not sure where they came from; abandoned by the previous occupant, he supposes. Spoons are not something he has ever given much consideration before.
However, the third time he ends up stirring his coffee with the handle of a fork, he goes over to the sink and frowns down into it. There are three dirty spoons in it. He is sure there used to be more spoons than that.
He knocks at the door of what he is careful not to call Erik's room, because Erik is not technically living here. The guest room, then. Erik has been a guest for several months now, and they are successfully avoiding the question of where Erik is in theory living or what happens next.
"Yes?" Erik calls impatiently. Charles waits for the click of the door unlocking. After a minute he tries the doorknob and finds that it is, in fact, unlocked. This is a form of progress in their relations, and it almost distracts him from the question at hand.
"Where are all the spoons?" he asks.
Erik looks up from the papers spread out across his desk as if returning from a great distance. "In the sink," he says. "You left them there."
"I mean the other spoons," Charles says. "The spoons we used to have."
"I'm using them," Erik says.
Charles considers this. "All of them?" he asks after a while.
"Yes." Erik hesitates and then pushes his chair back, leaving the papers spread where they are. Charles glances at his diagrams, but can't tell what he's been drawing. It could be anything from an assignment for one of his engineering classes to a better mousetrap. He watches Erik lift down a shoebox from the top of a bookshelf that had once held literature and now holds books with titles like Energetics in Metallurgical Phenomena.
Erik hands him the box. It is filled with pieces of metal. Some of them are curved in ways that suggest that they might once have been parts of spoons.
"Do you have something against spoons?" Charles asks.
"I needed smaller pieces." Erik looks intently at the box, and a number of the pieces rise into the air and begin to arrange themselves into a roughly spherical shape defined by the inward curves of former spoon bowls. "I tried paper clips, but this works better."
"What is it?" Charles asks. He pokes one of the spoon pieces in fascination, feeling it give slightly and then push itself back into place.
"It's the focusing mechanism for a device that amplifies paranormal abilities," Erik says.
Charles looks back at the sketches on Erik's desk. He is still not used to seeing ideas he throws out at four a.m. rendered neatly in pencil as fantasies of wire and steel. "How does it work?"
"I don't know yet," Erik says. The sphere turns slowly between them. "It's easier for me to think about it this way." He waves his hand, and a number of the pieces remove themselves from the pattern, assembling themselves instead into a spoon.
Charles takes the spoon out of the air. "I already used a fork," he says. Erik shrugs, as if to imply that he is not responsible for Charles's cutlery choices. The pieces of metal clatter into the box between them. Charles runs a hand through the box, feeling the cool metal slide through his fingers. "What does it feel like to you?"
"Come and see," Erik says, which Charles has learned to treat as a door unlocking. Erik wraps his fingers around the spoon Charles is holding, and Charles can feel its weight in Erik's hand and in Erik's mind. He wants to know what the metal would taste like in Erik's mouth. It is possible, he thinks, that he is acquiring an entirely inappropriate response to stainless steel.
"Entirely appropriate," Erik says, and for a moment it's all one in Erik's mind, iron and the potential for power and his growing arousal; Erik can feel the iron in Charles's blood as he presses his fingers against Charles's skin.
It makes all questions seem unimportant for a while, even the question of whether Charles is allowed to call the bed on which they make inelegant shapes Erik's bed yet. It's only a matter of time, he hopes, if he's careful not to scare Erik away.
He lies curled around Erik afterwards, naked, enjoying the rare luxury of so much physical contact. It makes it so easy to hear only Erik, not the constant unsettling whisper of other people's thoughts. Erik is imagining his shell of metal made larger, wrapping around the two of them, sealing them in together.
Charles doesn't mind the idea at all.