round 3 overflow post

[starkmodistries]

Round 3 Overflow Post

This post is for Round 3 fills only. We ask that when a round hits 8500 comments, fillers begin moving their fills to this post.

Format:SUBJECT LINE -- Round #, short description of fic (ex: "Alex/Hank, lab partners

Comments

FILL: Everyday Love in Stockholm 120/?

[tahariel]

“War is always awful.” Magneto steeples his fingers under his chin and looks at her for a moment longer before waving a hand and sitting forward again, picking up his pen with a quick flex of fingers that pulls it to his hand. “That’s why you have to do it unto others before they do it unto you. Thank you, Rogue. Could you ask Emma to come and see me when she’s free, please?”

Rogue jumps up from her seat as soon as he reaches for the pen, smart enough to know when he’s done talking. “No problem,” she says, and puts the chair back neatly where she found it, carefully aligning the feet with the indents of where it usually stood. “Is that a ‘come see me right now’ when she’s free or a ‘come see me whenever’ when she’s free?”

He smiles again, and is a little surprised by it, though not as much as she is, by the look on her face. “The former.”

“No problem,” she says again, snapping him a sloppy salute that would never pass military muster, and buzzes out of the room as quickly as she’d come in, where he can hear her picking up the phone on her desk to call over to Emma’s office. He sips at the coffee - still hot, and she’s put two biscuits on the plate, too, though he leaves those - and starts signing the forms he’s been left, leaving a quick sharp M wherever the pages have been marked. There has to be something practical he can do this afternoon, he thinks, twitching his head slightly to realign the weight of the helmet, all the more necessary if Emma is going to be coming down. Perhaps he can speak with Wolverine about the training program, find out what’s been put in place.

“Magneto?”

He looks up to find Rogue poking her head around the door, and nods, gesturing for her to come in. “Yes?”

“Ms Frost isn’t in her office just yet, but Kitty - that’s Shadowcat - will tell her as soon as she comes in, or checks in.”

Entirely possible, then, that Emma will turn up here without going to her own office at all, if she makes use of her secretary’s brain for a day planner and picks out the ‘appointment’. “Thank you.”

“And, Magneto?” Rogue’s still there when he looks up, stood awkwardly in the doorway. “Ah don’t want to be forward, but ah wanted you to know that we do appreciate what you do, you know? What you did? The humans might not see that mutants are doing a better job putting their country back together after they bombed it to bits than they ever did, but we all do, so. Um. Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine,” he says, and she just smiles at him and ducks back out of sight, that white streak in her hair whipping around with her head as she turns.

Magneto thinks about thanking Emma for giving him Rogue when he sees her, but decides against it. It would only give her a reason to be smug.

XIII

“It’s nothing we didn’t expect,” Emma says as she runs a finger around the rim of her cup, legs daintily crossed in a way Rogue never would, the stiletto heels on her feet delicately slender yet no doubt razor-sharp. “What would you have done differently, Magneto, if I had sent dossiers down to Brazil for you of all the little scuffles? If you’re going to nominate me to fill your shoes while you’re gone, then let me do it.”

“Fill me in on what you’ve been doing,” he says, and the door of his office swings shut without a touch, lock clicking quietly into place.

XIV

His favourite is the one Raven apparently suggested, where they sent Azazel to cow the religious fundamentalist groups into behaving.

XV

Charles has been cooking again that afternoon; when Erik comes in he is sat at the kitchen table with a textbook open in front of him and a highlighter pen tucked behind one ear, another one of a different colour in his hand, making slow progress across the page. They eat the spaghetti bolognese he’s made together, quiet and knock-shoulder close at the kitchen table.

“Raven got me a cooking book for Christmas,” Charles says eventually, when both of them are picking at the last of their meals, twirling his fork in the leftover spaghetti and dragging it in tightening circles across his plate. “She thought I might enjoy learning.”

Erik hums around his own mouthful, sips at his beer with the reverence of long absence. “What did I get you?”