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 (24e/24)

[turtletotem.livejournal.com]

So that, of course, was the moment the chime went off, warning them someone had entered the Headmaster's Tower using the Teacher's Emergency Protocol password, followed very shortly by Raven banging on the door.

"Get up, Charles, I know you and Erik's lazy bums are still in that bed, and if you don't get out I'm going to break in there and drag you out!"

Charles could actually watch his own blush spread down his chest, how interesting.

"Get thee hence, Raven!"

"I'm checking on you again in five minutes!"

Erik, who in any less endorphin-drenched moment would have been tearing Raven's head from her shoulders, merely laughed into the crook of Charles's neck and said, "You have responsibilities. Headmaster."

The sly, silky way he said the last word made Charles's blush spread farther. "Just so you know, Erik, I'm not wearing a schoolgirl uniform, not even for you."

"Whoever said you would be wearing it?"

"Merlin's beard, Erik, I did not need that mental image!"

Erik laughed again, trailing his hands up and down Charles's back and nibbling kisses down his neck.

Charles whimpered. "Can't get distracted… must get up… Moira probably having fits…"

"Heaven forbid we upset Moira." It was said reflexively, without heat or malice. Charles had worried, a bit, about Erik's reaction when he chose Moira, not Erik, as his deputy; Erik had, after all, been teaching less than a term—

"Great Scott, you considered me?" Erik had cried, appalled. "I will thank you to never, ever do that again, Charles. Teaching's bad enough."

'Bad enough' to leave Erik grinning, if confounded, every time one of his students dragged in another Get Well card and accosted him with a hug. It was getting increasing hard for Charles to even comprehend how much he loved this man.

"All right, all right, let's get cleaned up," Erik said now, disentangling himself from the bed and hefting Charles into his arms. "Time to try out that bathtub."

The huge claw-foot bathtub was the only article of Shaw's furniture Charles had kept when he moved his own things into the Headmaster's Tower. As of tonight, Charles thought, they could start moving Erik's things in here as well. Though, judging from the number of only-half-familiar items scattered through the rooms, he suspected that process had already begun without either of them acknowledging it.

"Are you sure we have time for this?"

"What are they going to do, Charles, start your inauguration without you?"

That, Charles decided, when they were settled chest-deep in the warm water, Erik's arms tight around him, was a fair point. They could perhaps take a few more minutes...

So when he realized what an encouraging effect the hot water was having on them both, Charles didn't hesitate to tip his head back and pull Erik down for a kiss, the wedding ring burning hot on his finger.

---

You are cordially invited to celebrate
the union of
Charles Francis Xavier
and
Erik Magnus Lehnsherr
On Tuesday afternoon
December the 19th
at 2 o'clock
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry




'Getting married' was a matter of registrations, witnesses, waiting periods, and avalanches of Civil Partnership paperwork, all of it completed nearly a week before the actual 'wedding date' they'd set. The wedding ceremony being, then, entirely ornamental, they were free to choose an officiant with no actual authority to officiate anything, and it took less than sixty seconds of pleading blue eyes for Minerva McGonagall to make time for it in her busy post-retirement schedule.

Charles had fretted himself to shreds over decorations until Erik wrested the overflowing Wedding Notebook out of his hands and tossed it to a passing house-elf with the instructions to "make it pretty."

The result was, first, Charles fretting himself to shreds about the house-elves, but at least in a more intermittent fashion than he had been, and second, an explosion of twinkling lights and old-fashioned-Christmas décor that had him in transports.

"Admit it," Erik said, "sometimes I have good ideas."

"Sometimes you have the good idea of letting other people have good ideas for you. That's as far as I'll bend."