Prompt Post: ROUND SEVEN
ROUND SEVEN IS CLOSED
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<< ROUND SIX | ALL ROUNDS | ROUND EIGHT >>
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... )
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Erik shifted the bag around in his hands as he climbed the steps leading up to their room. Curse mutants hiding out in the middle of nowhere. Curse cheap hotels with creaky, unstable floorboards that could collapse underneath him at any time. Curse this miserable heat. And curse Charles and his stupid charisma for goading him into sticking with this ridiculous mission.
He could feel sweat clinging to his back as he made his way down the hall, making the fabric of his shirt stick uncomfortably with every step he took. The heat was damn near unbearable in this place, and he couldn’t wait until they were free of it. How people managed to live here, he had no idea.
The brass numbers on the door marking their room were dull with age, leering at him like some sort of challenge. He glared back, unlocking the door with little more than a twist of his fingers, room key be damned. He’d been living in New York for too long. The heat was starting to get to him, and it was unacceptable. He kicked the door shut behind him.
“Charles, I brought the…” He trailed off as he examined the room. It wasn’t much different than before he’d left to grab a quick dinner for the both of them, but he hadn’t expected the place to be so dark. He frowned and flicked on the light, his attention focused on the man seated at the small table in the corner with his head in his hands. There was no muttered hello, no wave of his hand. Nothing. Charles hadn’t even looked up to greet him. Odd, that.
He stalked over to the table, his frown deepening with every step. Erik had had the courtesy of going out and fetching some dinner for the both of them, and yet here Charles was, sitting alone in the dark without even bothering to turn on the fan. It was almost as stifling inside the room as it was out.
He flung himself into the empty chair across from Charles and dropped the grocery bag onto the scuffed wooden tabletop with a heavy thunk. Charles visibly winced at the noise, and when he looked up, Erik’s resolve softened. The man looked awful, and he was cradling his head in his hands as though it were something precious that had just caught fire. Too painful to handle, but too valuable to let go. Waves of foreign thoughts and feelings were washing over Erik like the tide, and he scooted his chair back a little from the table, hoping the added distance would help alleviate Charles’s thoughts pressing down on his mind.
“H’lo, Erik,” Charles mumbled into his hands. He had yet to look up and face the other man, instead choosing to grind his face harder into the palms of his hands, as though the added pressure might lessen the ache in his skull.
“Headache?” Stupid question. Of course it was a headache, and it looked to be a bad one at that. He simply couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Charles grunted in response. He didn’t trust himself to raise his head, and the sound of his own voice was grating to his ears, far too loud and echoing for far too long after the words had left his lips. He didn’t trust himself to even attempt telepathic communication.
Erik sighed and pushed himself from his seat, trudging past his ailing friend to the bathroom. He knew that Charles always kept some painkillers in his toiletry bag. He rifled through the thing, shifting aside a small bottle of shampoo and Charles’s razor to find the little rattling bottle of white pills. They probably wouldn’t do much, but it was something. One of the little complementary glass cups beside the sink was quickly filled with tap water.
He walked back over to the table and placed the little bottle of pills and the water in front of Charles. The man actually looked up this time. His whites of his eyes were tinged with red, the skin around them darkened like the man hadn’t slept in a week. “Drink.” Erik nudged the glass a little closer to Charles with his hand and then made his way back to his seat, his eyes fixed on the professor.
Charles just looked at the water, the pills on the table in front of him, before lifting his gaze to Erik. “What-”
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Charles reached forward and unscrewed the cap on the bottle, tapping out a couple of little white pills into his hand. Erik reached across the table for the paper bag holding their dinner, fishing out the twin packages inside. He slid one over to Charles and began unwrapping his own, eager for the sandwich inside but careful to make as little noise as possible. He could feel Charles’s pain surge with every crinkle of the paper in his hands but schooled his features into stone. Charles didn’t need to know that he was projecting.
“I got you the turkey. You weren’t very clear about what you wanted when I left.” Talking might help keep the man out of his head. If his control was bad enough for him to be projecting, there was no way for Erik to know that Charles wasn’t inadvertently rifling through his thoughts.
“That’s fine,” Charles replied, reaching forward for his sandwich. “I’ve never been terribly picky.”
“Mmm,” Erik grumbled around the mouthful of food in his cheek. The deli hadn’t exactly been the most respectable establishment, but he had to admit that they could make a pretty damn good sandwich. Now, if only he could manage to get rid of this heat. He eyed the fan in the corner before turning his attention back to Charles. He swallowed and lowered the food in his hands. Charles was gingerly picking at his sandwich. He hadn’t even taken a bite. “Not hungry?”
He startled and looked up, wincing as he did. Moved too fast. “What?”
Erik nodded toward the sandwich resting on the table. “Not hungry? You’ve barely touched that.”
Charles sighed and pulled off a little bit of bread from the corner. “Not particularly, but you went through the trouble of getting this for us, and it won’t last long in this heat.”
Erik nodded and cast another glance at the fan. “Are you feeling any better?”
“Yes, the medication has made this more manageable.”
Erik tilted his head toward the fan. “Then do you mind if I turn that on? You seem rather sensitive to sound at the moment, and I’d rather not experience your headache tonight while I sleep.”
Charles lowered his head into his hand again, rubbing his fingers along the temple. “Yes, I think I’ll be fine. The heat will probably aggravate things more than the noise anyway.”
Erik nodded once more and flicked his fingers toward the fan. The little metal switch at its base rose, and the machine’s buzzing filled the air. His eyes never left Charles, who was still picking at his sandwich like a moody child. He let out a heavy sigh. “You need to eat something, Charles. You’re no good to me if you can’t function. I can’t pick out this mutant on my own.”
Charles didn’t answer. He simply popped the bit of bread in his fingers into his mouth and slowly began to chew. Erik turned back to his own sandwich, trying desperately to ignore the subtle waves of pain and discomfort that were still leaking over from Charles to him, instead focusing on the beads of sweat that were resting uncomfortably in the curve of the small of his back and the feel of the bread and meat in his mouth.
It was going to be a long night.
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