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 186/?

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

There is too much to say this week to put at the top of the fic, so there will be a separate note at the bottom in a separate comment. But this week completes the story in its entirety - I hope you enjoy it! I am incredibly nervous and excited about posting this for you guys, so please let me know what you think. Now I will shut up and get on with the final update of Everyday Love in Stockholm.



XVII

Emma coordinates everything; they hash out the details together over the next week, fine-tuning the minutiae until both of them are happy with their roles and where they’re going with it.

Erik doesn’t tell Charles about what he’s doing; instead they both pretend nothing is wrong, though Charles is always watching Erik with quiet eyes, asking a question he never voices and Erik cannot yet answer. They muddle along awkwardly, like a car with a slowly flattening tyre, still driving along though it’s tilting to one side ever more precariously, drifting towards the central reservation.

They still eat together, spend their evenings on the couch at their respective tasks and sleep side by side, but when they lay down there is a good foot of space between their bodies now, and when they wake up as tangled up in each other as ever Charles slowly separates himself, careful so as not to wake Erik, and gets out of bed so he can pretend he is merely rising early.

Erik always wakes up. He keeps his eyes closed, though, to allow Charles the deception that he is sparing Erik pain.



XVIII

The first thing Erik has to do to put their plan into action is to hold a meeting with the leader of the People’s Integrationist Party.

Moira McTaggert is a strong, eloquent woman who would look delicate if it weren’t for the burning determination she seems to wear like a permanent mask, big brown eyes that could be soft instead sharp and passionately intelligent. When she argues for integration of humans and mutants she is arresting, engaging in a way that has gathered her a following despite her ‘party’ being no more than a well-organised focus group without governmental approval. It’s also earned her several very credible death threats, and two near misses, one with a bomb, but it doesn’t seem to have scared her off - quite the opposite.

Magneto can admit that she is beautiful, in a very human way that is only enhanced by her keen mind. She walks into his office with her chin high and her pantsuit impeccably pressed, her heels at least as high as Emma’s, precarious-looking, though she doesn’t so much as wobble on the thick carpet.

He’s heard she was a CIA agent, back before the Month of the Atom. Meeting her fierce poise with his own as he rises from his chair to greet her, he can well believe it.

“First Mutant Magneto,” she says, offering him a hand to shake as soon as she is within range, her voice polite but cold. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“The pleasure is mine,” he replies, and takes her hand once a quick glance has determined it to be empty of threats. Her grip is brief but firm, though her palms are a touch damp - not so immune to nerves as she’d like to appear, then. “Please sit down.”

“No Emma Frost?” McTaggert looks around with every pretence of surprise, even as she lowers herself gracefully into the chair opposite the one he sits back down in once she is settled. The little corner arrangement had been brought in especially for this meeting, not that she needs to know that. There are even fresh flowers on the coffee table, snapdragons and sea thistles, most likely Frost’s idea of a joke. “I would have expected her to be here to check if I’m telling you the truth.”

Magneto smiles tightly. Emma would hardly need to be in the room, if reading McTaggert’s mind was their purpose. “That’s not what this meeting is about.”