Prompt Post: ROUND THREE
ROUND THREE IS CLOSED
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<< ROUND TWO | ALL ROUNDS | ROUND FOUR >>
Rules post.
Flat view.
Updates Post (WIPs only)
Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
There may be some delay on posts appearing when there is a URL in the message body as they are automatically marked as suspicious and I ( Read more... )
He’s fourteen before he really connects that it’s probably not normal to think in the third person. Was there a point where he started thinking he instead of I? Because it’s all just a rambling thrum of narration, thoughts and memories and little snatches of things that might be memories or his memories of those memories. He can’t be sure what’s him, half the time.
Charles gets jumped outside his dorms once-more than, of course, but this one sticks out-and it’s the first time he fights back, really. Thrashes and kicks and bites because he’s little and pretty so he fights dirty as he can. There’s a boy named Brent whose father beat him every day of his life kicking him in the gut over and over until he vomits. Matthew, who has Charles’ arms wrenched behind his back had a priest who touched him in ways he didn’t understand liking, and he’s pulling so hard that Charles’ shoulders scream.
It hurts of course. He can’t see out of his left eye for three days straight and he can’t sleep on his back, but there’s the deep calm of their exorcism, too. He doesn’t know how to separate the two, so they snarl together behind his eyes and even when he’s old enough to understand it, they never quite come untangled. The bite of pain sings bright against his nerve endings and even if he hates it, it’s the closest thing he has to worship.
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Thank you so much for writing and sharing.
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It's not something to be shoved and spit at over anymore. It's not showing off, or being wrong again, somehow. University is more cerebral--sure, there are still the rough-and-tumble rugby players who go out of their way to trip him in the halls, but now it seems juvenile. Childish. Charles isn't the freak quite as much as he was--now he's a quiet, somewhat shy boy trying to make his way though his classes, just like everyone else.
Well. Not like everyone else, necessarily, because he figures out very quickly that university is easy. School always has been, for him, but he refuses to feel like an outsider again just because he enjoys lectures and musty old science journals. It's a blessing, actually, the way he learns things the first time he reads them and never forgets, the way he doesn't have to pore over his notes for hours and hours before exams.
Which he does anyways, because he has a study group now, and it's the first time he's had people willingly spend an extended period of time in his company. It's not friends, okay, he knows that. He's not stupid.
But...it's nice. It's somewhat approaching normal. And okay, it takes him a little while to figure out that no, they don't actually want the answers to every question they ask. That's the point of a study group, he guesses, and after the sharp, sneering stares he gets the first week, Charles learns to keep his mouth shut.
They don't like him after that, but they don't hate him either. They ignore him, mostly, but they don't tell him to leave. Charles kind of figures that's as close as he's going to get.
Coincidentally, university is also where he discovers alcohol. And he's not sure what he likes more--the hours spent in the library with people who can actually think on his level, or the fifth of bourbon he's taken to downing with breakfast.
But he's not foolish enough to believe that the two are mutually exclusive.
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It's not something to be shoved and spit at over anymore. It's not showing off, or being wrong again, somehow. University is more cerebral--sure, there are still the rough-and-tumble rugby players who go out of their way to trip him in the halls, but now it seems juvenile. Childish. Charles isn't the freak quite as much as he was--now he's a quiet, somewhat shy boy trying to make his way though his classes, just like everyone else.
Well. Not like everyone else, necessarily, because he figures out very quickly that university is easy. School always has been, for him, but he refuses to feel like an outsider again just because he enjoys lectures and musty old science journals. It's a blessing, actually, the way he learns things the first time he reads them and never forgets, the way he doesn't have to pore over his notes for hours and hours before exams.
Which he does anyways, because he has a study group now, and it's the first time he's had people willingly spend an extended period of time in his company. It's not friends, okay, he knows that. He's not stupid.
But...it's nice. It's somewhat approaching normal. And okay, it takes him a little while to figure out that no, they don't actually want the answers to every question they ask. That's the point of a study group, he guesses, and after the sharp, sneering stares he gets the first week, Charles learns to keep his mouth shut.
They don't like him after that, but they don't hate him either. They ignore him, mostly, but they don't tell him to leave. They don't scowl when he walks into the room. There's not that awful, familiar wrench of what's he doing here, why doesn't he have the decency to crawl off somewhere and off himself quietly? One of the girls--a small, curvy little blonde with an American accent and an unsettling ease with corrosive chemicals, the kind of girl Charles wishes he could want--even smiles at him sometimes. They don't mind him.
Charles kind of figures that's as close as he's going to get.
Coincidentally, university is also where he discovers alcohol. And he's not sure what he likes more--the hours spent in the library with people who can actually think on his level, or the fifth of bourbon he's taken to downing with breakfast. And supper. And in between, because it makes him loose and pliant and casual in a way he's never known how to be.
But he's not foolish enough to believe that the two are mutually exclusive.
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She sits down next to him, too close, her thigh bare and warm against the wool of his trousers. She's pretty, he thinks muzzily, in such a California way--none of that anaemic English pallor, just gold skin and white teeth and hair the colour of corn silk.
He realizes, abruptly, that it's the texture of corn silk, too. Which he knows, because he's touching it.
'Sorry, so sorry,' he murmurs, snatching his hand back. He's not that drunk, he's never that drunk. What the hell is he doing? Smiling doesn't mean she's okay with touching him, doesn't mean she wants him touching her and what if she thinks he's trying to pick her up, Christ, he can't exactly come out with thanks but no thanks, honey, afraid I'm queer as a nine-bob note, but could you keep that to yourself, please, I don't much fancy getting my head smashed in--
She touches her forehead, grimacing and something in his chest twists. He's drunk. He's drunk and he's doing it again, stupid, stupid, why can't he control it, why can't he, he should have stayed home should have--
'Fuck,' she hisses, wincing now. 'Could you just--you're so loud, can you just not do that for a minute?'
Sick, he squeezes his eyes shut and wrenches at his own mind, curls it small and scared into itself, crushes it down, down, down.
California's clutching at her chest now, right where her heart would be. She doesn't look any more comfortable. She stares down at it, where he hand's pressed hard against the swell of her breasts, and when she looks back up at him, she's grinning.
'Christ,' he says, and it sounds almost admiring. 'You are a mess.' And then she bares her teeth in a smile that's not as pretty as it is dangerous and it must be Charles' imagination, because her eyes look yellow.
She touches his arm. He flinches away, violently. The smile eases into something she might give to a very small child, or a frightened puppy and he can hear oh, you poor thing somewhere in the back of his skull. 'Erik's gonna love you.'
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I can't wait to see Erik!
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Thank you for writing this, and for writing this so well.
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In fact, Erik barely looks at him. He tosses a brief, calculating look over the top of his newspaper, appraising, like he's the sort of man who can't look at anything without considering its worth. Charles gets the brief impression of cold eyes, razor cheekbones and--nothing. It's like standing across from a metal box, dull and smooth and perfectly impenetrable. Charles can't feel a thing from him, can't hear, it's like being deaf and blind.
God, it's calming.
Erik snaps the newspaper up again and he's gone. 'I thought we talked about bringing home strays, Raven,' is all he says, in a calm, perfectly clipped American accent and Charles hadn't realized 'til now that he'd been expecting something much more Germanic and harsh
'He's a telepath,' Raven says, and crosses the room to flop onto the couch next to Erik. She wriggles into the cushions and pillows her head on Erik's thigh, tossing Charles a sweet little half-smirk. She has to push Erik's newspaper aside to do so, and he glances down at her with one eyebrow raised, looking annoyed and resigned all at once.
Lovers, Charles, thinks, and then no, that's not right. Siblings? But that isn't it either, doesn't quite explain the messy, sprawling way Erik lets her push into his personal space when he keeps himself perfectly contained and sitting ramrod-straight. There's an almost military precision to it and really, who reads the newspaper like their spine might snap if they dare to relax it?
He is possibly still drunk.
'A telepath?' Erik glances up at him one more time and Charles knows how he must look--red-eyed and bleary, hair mussed, shirt untucked, reeking of alcohol. Young and sloppy, and so entirely unlike the man on the couch, with his crisply-pressed trousers and fitted turtleneck and stupid, stupid cheekbones. He could be a model, if only he'd stop scowling for a second.
Charles grits his teeth and clamps down firmly on that train of thought, thank you very much. But then Erik smiles, this sharp, cutting thing with too many bright shark-teeth, wicked as the business side of a blade. Charles closes his eyes and hopes it looks like he's just trying to keep himself from being sick all over the plush hotel carpet.
He sort of is. Faggot, he snarls at himself, furious and then freak and it helps, the rhythm of those two cracked, familiar words. It calms him down like it always does, settles the old, familiar pain in the pit of his stomach and it's like a security blanket, warm and smothering.
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