Prompt Post: ROUND FIVE
ROUND FIVE IS CLOSED
<< ROUND FOUR | ALL ROUNDS | ROUND SIX >>
Rules post.
Posting Guidelines.
Flat view.
Updates Post (WIPs only)
Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
There is a delay on comments appearing when there is a URL in the message body. This is due to an LJ anti-spam ( Read more... )
<< ROUND FOUR | ALL ROUNDS | ROUND SIX >>
Rules post.
Posting Guidelines.
Flat view.
Updates Post (WIPs only)
Fills Post (completed Fills only)
damalur's firstclasskink on Delicious.
Volunteers always welcome.
There is a delay on comments appearing when there is a URL in the message body. This is due to an LJ anti-spam ( Read more... )
“You don’t intend to sleep there,” Erik said.
The slave looked up at him in some confusion. “Oh?” he said. “Don’t I?”
A noble’s words again, not a slave’s. Who was this boy? “You can’t sleep on the floor, like a dog,” Erik said. It came out harsher than he meant, but he was too tired to be kinder. “Get up, damn you. Stay on the bed, here. I won’t touch you.” It was a rich man’s bed, cloud-soft and broad enough for five. He was used to soldiers’ berths. Even at home he slept on a hard couch in the military style. The downy swaddle felt like being eaten alive. Erik rolled to the far edge, his back to the slave.
There was a breathing silence. Then tentative footsteps, and the bed bowed under a new weight. For a moment, Erik felt a razor-sharp prickle on the back of his neck. It was the heat of the boy’s skin, mere inches away; he’d reached out a hand as if to touch Erik, and then perhaps thought better of it. The heat withdrew, and the sheets rustled as the slave drew them over himself. Erik lay still, hunched under his own worn-out misery, staring unseeing at the wall.
Out of the tense quiet the slave said, “I wish you would let me -- take care of you.”
He had never heard a slave express a wish for anything. Certainly not to a captor. Could a boy who had been beaten into the desire to please ever know what he wanted, even if he asked for it?
Erik turned over abruptly. The slave was not as close as he had feared, but still he was too close. His face was invisible in the darkness.
“What’s your name?” Erik demanded.
A little hesitation. Then, “Charles,” the boy said. He was still wearing the gold bracelets. They looked heavy and uncomfortable; he must have grown used to them.
“You must have a patronym,” Erik said. “You weren’t born a slave.”
This time the silence was longer, more loaded. The boy finally said, “Xavier.” He still didn’t sound angry, only -- confused, maybe. As if he were being reminded of something he wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to remember. “Charles Xavier.”
“Go to sleep, Charles Xavier,” Erik said shortly. “Leave me in peace.”
Light edged the slave’s mouth. He was smiling again. It was enough to make your teeth hurt. “All right,” he said, equably enough.
Erik rolled back over. He had no desire to show his back to a stranger, but in this case it was easier than looking at him.
“Goodnight,” Charles said softly, behind him. He said it so easily, as if he had nothing to fear from Erik. As if they were old friends.
Erik said nothing. It seemed hours before he fell asleep; and his dreams were colorful and troubling.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
askhhefkjehsfem it's July 11 why isn't there moooore?
Reply
Reply
-----
In the dream he was at the footraces, running for the pure sake of it. He was flying naked across the packed-sand track of the training field, which was golden in the late sun. His feet sent up scuffs of dust, his chest was taut with exhilaration. Risking a glance to his side he saw that he wasn’t running alone, as he’d thought; he had outstripped the whole company.
The other trainees were only shouting good-naturedly after him, they were his friends, his brothers -- but even to see them there changed everything. A heated thrill of rage or fear rose in him, or maybe the joy of running was still there but suddenly fierce and frightening, and now the sand was dragging at his feet like water. The pack drew closer. One boy stretched an arm out to touch his back.
Erik’s eyes snapped open. It took him half an instant to assemble where he was; another to remember whose body heaved warmly under him, whose throat he’d pressed a white line into with the edge of his knife.
He had the slave’s gold-bound wrists pinned in one hand, his shoulder twisted painfully sideways. Charles’s mouth was open, flushed, and his breath came fast and hot against Erik’s shoulder. His blown pupils, outlined in electric blue, fixed unblinking on Erik’s face.
The snap of recognition was like seizing hot iron. Erik pushed himself violently away.
Reply
Charles had barely moved. At the words he raised his hand half-dazedly to his neck. He was naked, Erik saw with a painful tightening in his belly, and the absurd flush on his cheeks had spread downward, leaving a mottled pink splotch at the top of his chest. He said, “I--” and swallowed. Erik saw his throat move under the angry mark the blade’s edge had left. His vision went briefly white at the edges.
“I -- I’m sorry,” Charles said, with some difficulty. “I thought -- you reached for me in your sleep, and I --”
“I told you I wouldn’t touch you,” Erik snapped. “Did you think I’d break my word so quickly?” It was asinine, this offended dignity. Clearly he had broken his word. He bit down on the inside of his cheek.
“No. No, it wasn’t that,” Charles said to the bedclothes. He ran a slightly shaking hand through his sleep-rumpled hair. “I--”
“Go,” Erik said. He could not speak any louder or he would lose control of his voice. “Will you go, for God’s sake?”
Those wide, smoke-rimmed blue eyes fixed on his again. Erik met them like a blow.
Finally the sooty lashes flickered. The vivid gaze released him. “I’m sorry,” Charles said again, sounding dazed. He slipped from the bed. He was -- God, the boy was more than half-aroused, though he turned quickly to hide it. The sun was, painfully, even sweeter to him than the lamplight had been: it gentled the shadows at his hipbones, brushed his pale skin with pink. Erik wanted to strangle himself.
The whole thing was too humiliating to be borne. He could not think of the last time he’d been so mastered by infatuation. He stared fixedly past Charles, at the mosaic on the far wall. He was still achingly hard. The windows, he thought with regret, were probably too narrow to hurl himself through.
The slave straightened and offered Erik a small, rueful half-smile. Erik watched him coldly, not moving. Charles’s smile faltered a little. He moved past Erik to the door, passing close. Erik smelled the spiced wood of the harem, and closed his hand into a fist.
He passed; Erik almost breathed again; and then there was a hand pressed hesitantly to his bare arm. Charles’s palm was warm and dry. A glow roared through Erik’s body, groin to scalp. He closed his eyes.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Charles said softly. “Please. I didn’t.” He didn't seem to recognize the absurdity of it. Erik held himself perfectly still, said nothing.
Reply
Erik heard himself say, “No.”
“No?” Charles echoed.
“You,” Erik said, and went nowhere with it. “You -- should come again. I don’t want another.”
A long moment. Then Charles said, “As you like, lord.” His voice was carefully neutral.
"If you're afraid," Erik said curtly, hating himself and Charles and the King and every damned instant of this unbearable mortification, "you needn't--"
"I'm not afraid," Charles said. Erik was going mad, clearly, but he thought there was something like a laugh behind that voice. Charles's fingertips closed warm on Erik's elbow again. Then Erik heard his footsteps across the flagstones, and the soft closing of the door.
For a long time he stayed where he was.
Then he said, aloud, “You’re an idiot.” His laugh came out a bitter little cough.
This was what he’d come to, so close to his goal. He was a hypocritical old lecher, lust-mad over some highborn delicatus who’d read him a few nice lines and made sheep’s eyes in his direction over dinner. He barely noticed he’d slammed his fist onto the tray on the side-table until it was crashing to the floor, the heavy goblet ringing as it spun on the stone.
It was enough to shock him back to his senses; he dug the heel of his hand into his eye and exhaled.
Well, the thing was done, it couldn’t be helped now. He’d have to work around it, that was all. He had worked around a feeling before. It was no different than anger or fear or even hunger. It could be ignored. He gripped the coin so hard that its edges cut into his palm and went to the washbasin.
A few petals still floated on the water. For an instant instead of his own reflection Erik saw pale dark-ringed blue eyes, a heated cheek, the ghostly flare of sensation that was Charles’s skin sliding against his.
“Hell,” Erik said wretchedly, and plunged his head into the frigid water.
Reply
but srsly you have a vivid writing style!
Reply
Leave a comment