round 3 overflow post

[starkmodistries.livejournal.com]

Round 3 Overflow Post

This post is for Round 3 fills only. We ask that when a round hits 8500 comments, fillers begin moving their fills to this post.

Format:
SUBJECT LINE -- Round #, short description of fic (ex: "Alex/Hank, lab partners")
--- Link to the prompt
--- Text of the prompt

--- Link to the fill
OR
--- Entire text of the fill

EXAMPLE:
Prompt: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=1038472#t2038174

Charles/Erik -- Charles is a bakery owner whose most frequent customer is Erik.

Fill: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/6437.html?thread=0139482#t4502942

Charles started off the morning the same way he always did...

Comments

FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 157/?

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

LIV

He dreams almost every night, now, not about the camps but about the ghettos before that, about his parents’ faces even before that every day when they opened their newspaper, pinched and white-lipped, the rapid-fire whispers stopping as soon as they realised he was listening. He’s not really sure he can call them nightmares, because they’re horrible but not frightening, not really. Erik has most certainly had more disturbing dreams.

And yet - and yet -

He wakes up panting and sweat-sodden for no good reason, wiping a hand across his face to mop his brow of this deep-seated anxiety that rises in his chest like a swelling canker, putting pressure on his lungs and making his breaths short and shallow. At least he hasn’t woken Charles, he thinks for the long quiet moment before the other man rolls over, eyes barely slitted open, lids clearly trying to slip back closed.

“Are you alright?” Charles asks, voice still gummy with sleep. “Nightmare?” His hand comes up to rest on Erik’s chest, above his heart, slightly cupped as though he wants to hold the beat of it in, press down on it until it slows, steadies. His forearm lies on Erik’s stomach, a warm and welcome weight, like the line of Charles’ body pressed against his side.

Erik sighs, lets his head tip sideways so that his forehead rests against the top of Charles’ head, hiding his expression. “Not really. Just remembering, I think.”

“Remembering what?” Charles shifting to get comfortable shuffles the bedclothes around them, tugging and pulling them into a new shape, and Erik shifts a little too, making himself a better shape to fit Charles’ loose curl.

He thinks for a minute, lets his fingers tap against the line of Charles’ shoulderblade. “I’m not sure,” he says eventually, and it’s easier, somehow, in the dark, to let the words slip out instead of holding them tight to his chest, guarded like a hand of cards. “All of this - the violence, the identity papers, the racial hatred - reminds me of my childhood.”

“Mmm. Oh. Well, you know what I think,” and Charles yawns, though he’s clearly trying to stay awake. “Maybe you’re trying to tell you something? If it makes you think about that. There are - ” he yawns again, a wide stretch of his mouth that he doesn’t bother to cover, “sorry - rather obvious parallels.”

The dark ceiling above them is another country, shadowed and cracked where the building has shifted, like being below deck on an old-fashioned sailing ship. Sometimes Erik feels that he might be able to see stars through it, just out of reach in an ebon sky. The two of them adrift together somewhere, far away from everyone else. “I know.”

“Am I the Jew, then, hiding in your basement?” Charles asks, and props himself up on the arm braced on Erik’s chest, resting his chin on his fist so that he can meet Erik’s eyes, his pupils dilated so large that his eyes could be all over black, dark and bottomless in the greyed-out bedroom. “Why do you do it if you know it’s the same? How can you let it happen?”

Erik wants to hide his face, but there is nowhere to hide it, this close; he has no choice but to let Charles see his mouth draw in tight and unhappy, to see the real feelings he’s been trying to crush with pragmatism. “What choice do I have? My reasons are different than theirs. It’s the only thing I can do to try and get things back under control.”

“Not the only thing.” He can feel Charles’ warm moist breath brushing against his face when he speaks, they’re so close.

He sighs. “I tried talking. They didn’t take me up on it.”

“Then keep offering. Maybe eventually they will, if they see you’re serious.”

“They’ll never believe I’m serious, Charles.”

The human huffs, brows drawing together in a frown that Erik wants to ease out with his thumb, rub the line between them until it smooths. “Of course not, if you don’t show them you are. Isn’t there some gesture you could make, to show you mean it?”