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: The Better Men (23c/24)

[turtletotem.livejournal.com]

Erik kept his eyes on the wand, battling to keep his face impassive, his interest believable. "You say Charles can be protected?"

"It's not guaranteed, you understand – I don't want to accuse me of dealing in bad faith if it fails – but nearly so. Reliable enough that I've entrusted my few, but valued, Muggle-born followers to its care."

"Last night, at the lake."

"You have been snooping about. Yes, precisely. And if you decline, after all, his death is quite certain."

Erik watched the wand Shaw was rolling absently back and forth in his fingers. "Very well. I accept." He tried not to see the shocked rage on Charles's face.

"Excellent! I had so hoped you would see reason." Shaw smiled and loosed Erik's bonds with a gesture.

"Erik, what are you doing?"

"Whatever it takes to keep you safe," Erik hissed, shaking the ropes off his wrists and dragging Charles forward into a hard, desperate kiss. Charles fought him, trying to jerk his head away, but Erik whispered "Trust me" against his lips and he stilled, drew back to lock eyes with him for a single searching moment.

Then he pulled away. "Don't do this, Erik," he said, sounding rather convincingly heartbroken, but he understood what Erik was doing, surely he did.

"I have to." Erik turned back to Shaw, watching with one eyebrow raised, and said, "Do it. Lay the protection."

Shaw drew a knife from his robes and rolled up his sleeve, revealing a scabbed cut on the underside of his forearm. He laid another beside it, and ran a fingertip through the blood. When he reached for Charles's head, Charles nearly tipped himself over dodging away; Erik had to hold him still while Shaw, murmuring a long incantation Erik could not begin to decipher, painted on a scarlet X on his forehead, surrounded by a circle.

The moment Erik released his head, Charles twisted to wipe the blood on his shoulder, turning the symbol to a red smear.

"No matter," Shaw assured him. "The spell is finished. And now, Erik, midnight is fast approaching. When this," he set a glow-ball on the edge of the altar, "flares white, cast the spell immediately. I should have just enough time to teach it to you."

The wand was practically humming with excitement in Erik's hand, and he could almost swear he felt the grip snuggle into his skin. The energy coursing through it felt just a little different than he remembered from his childhood – rougher, wilder. As if the wand had gone a bit feral in its long solitude. Very possibly a cause for alarm, Erik knew, but he couldn't help reacting with something closer to fierce welcome. Glad to have you back, old friend. Show me what you've learned.

Shaw was walking him through the spell – incantation Lotus letalis amplexus in its maximum-range form – with very intricate, specific gestures, including one to indicate Dolly as the power source. Erik practiced it dutifully, pulling the point of the wand across Dolly's throat.

She looked up at him, shivering, hope and pleading and terror warring for space in her eyes, please be pretending, please don't kill me, help me, help me. Erik smoothed her hair back and, while Shaw was busy explaining the next gesture, murmured a spell under his breath.

Every knot in the room immediately loosened, even his own shoelaces. Dolly's eyes widened as she eased a hand free – Erik touched her wrist, not yet, not yet.

The easiest way, he figured, to ensure that this spell did not get cast tonight, was to simply let midnight come – and go. At that point Shaw would flip his lid, and they would all need to be able to move quickly. Until then, best to play along, lest Shaw decide to try the spell himself after all.

"One minute until midnight," Shaw said, and Erik began counting down in his head. He back toward Charles.

Charles had already worked free of his ropes and was creeping, slowly, silently, across the floor. Toward the gun that Shaw, in all his wizardly disregard of Muggle weapons, had left unattended on the floor.

Erik felt his eyes widen for the tiniest moment before he could control his expression. And Shaw, seeing, pulled out his own ash wand and turned around.