round 3 overflow post

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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

Opposition - Alex - Part 1b/3

[(Anonymous)]

“Jean told me you managed to shut the reactor down okay,” Alex remarked, “So does that mean the plant’s out of commission now?”

Scott nodded stiffly and Alex wondered if getting Jean to drag him in was such a good idea after all. It was one thing to be able to see with his own eyes that Scott hadn’t been severely injured by Alex’s plasma blasts, but this stilted interaction was making Alex feel awkward and irrationally guilty over what had essentially been an act of self-defence.

Alex, even as a child, had never considered himself to be particularly expressive, and the bumpy journey he’d undergone in the years leading up to meeting the professor and being recruited to the institute had only encouraged his inability to properly communicate his thoughts and feelings. Given Scott’s more than occasional tendency to stoic behaviour, he suspected that, like their mutations, this aspect of their personalities was at least partially genetic – which made confrontations such as this all the more difficult.

“Jean, she said you’d got some bruising?” Alex asked awkwardly, ignoring the fact that Jean had heavily implied that Scott’s injuries had been no more than trivial.

Scott winced and all instructions for Alex to stay put immediately flew out of the window. He began to push himself back up again asking, “Where? Are you alright? How bad it is?” and pointedly ignoring that fact that he was probably making himself sound like an overwrought teenage girl by expressing his worry so openly.

“Jean told you to stay still!” Scott snapped, and Alex immediately dropped back against the pillows, as much out of surprise as because Scott said so. “I… the less strain you put on them, the sooner your injuries will heal,” Scott continued, in a softer tone.

“Right,” Alex acquiesced, because Scott did have a point. There had been a lot of anti-mutant activity lately and they needed to be able to use all the resources they had. “The sooner they heal, the sooner I’ll be useful again.”

There was a long pause, before Scott finally said his name in an utterly unrecognisable tone.

Alex searched out his brother’s eyes behind the visor as Scott repeated his name in the same way again. “Alex… I’m so sorry…”

Alex shook his head, wondering if his hearing had been damaged as well. “Wha-? What are you…?”

Scott looked back at him steadily and now Alex recognised that under the lines of discomfort across his brother’s face was an expression worrying close to guilt. “For what happened on the way to the reactor?” he pressed and Scott nodded.

“Clearly insufficient safet-”