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... )
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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'That was the idea behind this, yeah. He's--fuck, Erik, he's strong. I mean, he's kind of drunk right now, but what he did...' Charles opens his eyes to see her making some wiggly gesture in the air with her manicured nails. He has no idea what she's trying to convey or who Shaw is or how she knows he's a telepath (because he did research, okay, and freak's not the technical word for it) but Erik tilts his head, considering.
'Can you show me?' And no, no Charles can't, because the thought of using it, the thought of trying to do it makes him abruptly nauseous, makes a cold clench of terror seize around something in his chest and if he wasn't so unsteady on his feet, he'd run, run out the door and down the hall and through the lobby and away, run until he collapsed.
All he wants, all he's ever wanted is for it to stop.
'I can't,' is all he chokes out, a small, strangled thing. The near-pleased expression on Erik's face vanishes, replaced with something much more familiar--disappointment.
'Then I can't see him having much use, Raven,' Erik says, and picks up his newspaper again. Dismissed, just like that, and this was a waste of time. Charles has told her it would be, but she'd smiled at him and said different like it meant special and God, Charles was stupid.
'You can't feel that?' Raven glances up at Erik, rolls her eyes. 'Of course you can't. You're a robot. God forbid something as plebeian as feelings touch you. ' Some complex, near-impossible twist of her body has her springing up off the couch and padding towards him, steps soft in her stocking feet. 'He's probably never even trained. Have you?' she asks Charles, not unkindly.
'I have,' his traitorous mouth says, and yes, he kind of has, hasn't he? What else could the last decade have been, if it wasn't training, wasn't learning to crush his aberration down somewhere dark and secret where he didn't have to feel it all the time? It was rigorous, constant, exhausting. A fight, every day, from morning 'til night and sometimes in the nightmare hours between.
'Have you?' She looks--is--surprised. 'But you said--'
'I didn't say it worked,' he admits. But I've been trying, I've been trying so hard to make it stop, to make myself normal, it's just sometimes it's so much and I'm so tired, I can't try anymore--
Raven has her hands clamped over her ears, and Charles wants to tell her it won't help, it doesn't ever help. 'Erik,' she says mournfully, like it's the worst thing she's ever heard. 'Erik, he's been trying to stop.' Killing himself in pieces, she thinks and Charles flinches when she grabs hold of him, goes still as she crushes him into a hug.
She's not entirely wrong.
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This breaks my heart in all the good ways and I love Raven in this and poor Charles trying so desperately to stop being who he is. This fill is incredible. Your writing is brilliant and I can't wait for more!
Also, if you're having trouble with seeing your posts, just log into LJ, that usually solves it. The posts are there, but they don't always show up if you aren't logged in.
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This fic is so much more than I'd hoped for, it's hitting every angst-bone in my body, it's just lovely.
So yeah. Yay x
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