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 188/?

[tahariel.livejournal.com]

Charles’ hand moves, half a caress. “Lemon sponge cake,” he says, his breath warm on Erik’s face. “Would you like some?”

Erik shakes his head, gently so as not to dislodge the point of contact between them, the tip of his nose brushing across the bridge of Charles’. “I’m going to go shower.”

He thinks about asking Charles to join him, but since the only answer after that conversation can be no, he spares himself the rejection. Instead he thinks about Charles while the water is loud enough to hush up the sound of him jerking off, hard and fast and utilitarian, more a function than a fulfilment.

Erik thinks about a lifetime of this, of an empty apartment and unsatisfying nights with his own hand, of living in an emotional wasteland, stripped bare of anything and anyone to care about. He thinks about a lifetime of captivity, locked in with someone who loves him but unable to leave, unable to live a life of his own.

In many ways, Erik thinks, he’s as trapped by love as Charles is, because while Charles cannot bear to stay, Erik cannot bear to let him go.



XX

McTaggert agrees, of course. She has nothing to lose and everything to gain, and their second meeting is short and to the point, the suspicion on her face outweighed by the promise of getting that step up on the political ladder she has been needing but unable to reach without assistance from somebody at the top.

“You’re much more gracious than I expected,” she says demurely when they’re done, though her eyes are sharp as ever. “You must know I’m entirely human, First Mutant.”

He allows his mouth to curl in a humourless approximation of a smile. “Would you prefer it if I pretended to smell something bad?” Magneto turns away from the window and back to face her where she’s sat in the same chair as last time, legs neatly crossed and with the excellent posture of a martial artist. He thinks of the calluses on her hands, just so, in the places he would expect to find them on someone who is rather more than a hobbyist markswoman. “I hate politics, Ms McTaggert, but not so much that I can’t play along with the best. This is a transaction, not an offer to braid one another’s hair and talk about boys.”

She snorts, unladylike and somehow he likes her more for that, despite himself. “Hmm. Yes, I suppose it would be rather difficult with the helmet in the way.”

Sometimes it seems as though he cannot move for sassy women, he thinks with a certain amount of chagrin, and waves his hand at the documents on the coffee table beside her, cream-foldered and ring-stained from her cup, underlined where they have debated certain points and she has taken a pen to it, made her own notes. “Unless you have anything else to discuss, I assume we’re done? Ms Frost will be in touch with you to arrange the specifics of the press conference.”

“As it’s to be my press conference, don’t you think I should be in charge of the details?” McTaggert picks up the folder, flicking through it again. “I’m doing you a favour, here. Eventually you would have had to ratify us, will it or nil it. This only speeds up my timetable. Convenient, yes, but absolutely irrefusable, no.”

“I believe it is considered somewhat gauche to point out that I am to all intents and purposes the ruler of the world,” Magneto says dryly, and crosses to his desk, summoning a pen to his hand that flicks easily into his grip. The woman’s eyes snap to it with gratifying focus, this tiny little demonstration of his power. “There are very few things I have to do, any more.”

“There are a lot more humans than there are mutants, even still,” she answers, standing smoothly and smiling blandly. “It’s a big planet for one man to hold all the puppetstrings if the puppets decide they don’t want to play. Strings go two ways, which you know, or you wouldn’t have approached me in the first place.”

He shrugs, the long line of his cape sweeping against the floor with a quiet sound. “And I shall enjoy watching you dance.”

The human woman just keeps smiling, doll-like and clean of any hint of what she might be thinking. “With Emma Frost as Pied Piper, no doubt. I’ll show myself out.”