19 - More potassium than DMil's banana

[lolitics_meme]

*waves to everyone who is still around*
It's great to still see people prompting and writing :) We may have lost a few people on the way but we also had some new intake. Thanks for keeping this place alive!

Let's hope that conference season and the next election will help to pick up the pace a bit.

The ususal stuff:

1) All fills for prompts of

Comments

Professor Plum, with the dagger, in the ballroom (3/3)

[anonymous]

~//~

They left Isaac happily putting the game away, and headed back to the kitchen together. There would be laughter there, and too much food, and babies to hold and compliment. The holidays, in a word.

“Sorry,” Ed said, one step behind him in the dim hallway.

“For not beating Isaac?” David said, lightly, stopping but not turning. “Oh, he’s a Cluedo fiend. I half suspect him of cheating.” Another thing to blame Peter for, that streak of charming ruthlessness.

Ed put a hand on his arm, heavy through the ridiculous holiday sweater. “You know what for.”

He’d said it before, but David had never believed him before. He’d never been ready to believe him before.

“I know you can’t forgive me,” Ed said, his voice rueful, “but it’s the holidays, and I just wanted. To say it. To tell you that I’m glad you’re happy in America.”

Of course Ed was glad that David was happy in America. One less person to conspire against him here in the UK. Balls and Yvette were just biding their time for the next leadership election, and god knew who else; if David was still maintaining his power base, it might have already happened.

The words you don’t have anything to be sorry for were on David’s tongue, glib and insincere, but he swallowed them. Ed would know as well as he did that they weren’t meant. Ed did have something to be sorry for, and they both knew it. He’d made the decision that the prize was worth the sacrifice, and he’d no doubt have made it again if given a do-over, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something to be sorry for.

“I forgive you,” he said, finally, slowly.

Ed made an incoherent sound, the hand on David’s arm tightening involuntarily. “Really?” he said, his voice strange.

David thought about his sons, playing happily together in the park. He thought about Isaac’s love for Labour red, and the way Jacob’s pout reminded him of Ed’s. He thought about childhood rivalries and adult fights, about daggers in ballrooms and Ed’s eyes across a Cluedo table.

“Yes,” he said, and turned to face Ed.

The surprise on Ed’s face faded slowly into a smile, small and a little shaky, but there. “That’s good,” he said.

David rolled his eyes, reached out, and pulled him into an awkwardly clumsy hug. If they were going to do this, if they were going to succumb to the holiday spirit and get all mushy and emotional, they might as well go all the way. He’d never been a fan of half measures.

“Come on,” he said, after a moment. “They’ll eat all the pie without us.”

“That would never do,” Ed agreed, his voice suspiciously scratchy.

David ruffled Ed’s hair as they went into the kitchen together. “You should really just let yourself go grey. You’d get gravitas points.”

“Not you too,” Ed said, laughing, and then they were with their wives, and their mother was looking up, her face alight.

~//~

After dinner, Isaac put on his best wheedling face and asked for a Cluedo rematch.

David knew without looking that there would be worried looks being exchanged between Louise and Justine, but he only had eyes for Ed, and Isaac sitting angelically beside him. “Sure,” he said, smiling, and watched the tiredness in Ed’s eyes fade.

Isaac bustled off to set up the game, and David helped Ed clear the table.

“You know you’re raising a little Peter Mandelson,” Ed told him, as they put the dishes in the sink.

“Shut up,” David said, and jostled him with his hip.

~//~