Fic: You Like This Angle, Shoot (X-Men Movieverse, L/R)
Title: You Like This Angle, Shoot.
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse
Warnings: arted R, srs style crap.
Characters: Logan, Rogue (majora), Scott, Jean, Cody, Erik, John (minora), Bobby, Kitty, Gambit (offstage)
A/N: at the end.
Summary: This is it. You stand in the early morning, wagging your hips and knowing that Logan's eyes follow the slap you give the curve of your ass with the flat of your hand. You've had seven beers and a shot of Remy's bourbon.
Potato a fat walnut, the potato with checkered grit, by potato I mean low sunshine. Wheat whose limits are compelled to sing. (Lyn Hejinian, 'My Life')
There are ( ) bones in the human hand. You've broken (+1) of them. When we were children we'd sit on the back steps and pick the seeds out of pomegranates. Later we would know that work made us free.
'You think you can spare one of these?' Logan's fingers are knobby and short. Weeks have given his face shading, angular and wooden. You surrender a six pack. There are ( ) ways to repaint history. This is only (-6).
'I hear you had a rough night.' There is steam from his nostrils. Every summer, wild mustangs swim from Chincoteague to Assateague. When we finished our pomegranates, our mother made us wash off with the garden hose. The water wasn't potable. Who would want to pot water anyway? Later behind the barracks, we smoked cigarettes made from onion skins.
Scott's visor had been admonishing when he said that the beer was okay, and he bought it for you. You are special. Filtered through the green lens of the beer bottle, the rising sun does everything to keep your attention except shower you with raisins and say, 'Two scoops!' Our mother gave us madeleines on the truck ride to the camp; we ate them, not really realizing that she wanted us to remember her.
'You know those aren't your dreams, right?' Logan's eyebrow is independent of his face, what he says. It moves up like green glass. There were bears at the state fair who did this. Your father grounded you for a week when you fed them your bologna sandwich. Later, we would leave Ellis Island a changed man, free, completely understanding the value of every sandwich, bread and meat and cheese.
'When we first met,' is his involuntary start, which resembles the fumblings of a young hunter on the safety. He doesn't carry a bowie knife anymore. Cody has three pocket knives: one for weekdays, one for holidays, and one for church. Later, we found that all metals were ours, except aluminum foil. Instead, the literature of life gave us Foil, and that had been pretty damn funny to us, even if not to Charles.
'When we first met,' his finger closes on the trigger, 'I wouldn't have pegged you for a Miller girl.'
'Girl' makes you feel small, tight, wound up, gum hardened on the bottom of a school desk. Cherry gum.
'I can't taste it,' you say, because you lost your taste buds three weeks ago swallowing fire, deep-throating what Johnny sent you on national television, or at least the local evening news. John probably has it on You Tube by now. Later we will fall in love with a blue woman and give her a ring fashioned from handcuffs.
The sun is less cartoon when the green lens is off. There are ( ) dreams in the human body. This is just (+2) of them. Your hips are slim, girl-like, and those aren't the kind any boy you know likes. You wish for the rounded bones of time.
His speech skips a beat, warbles, whistles, wheedles. Long grass bends backwards. You wish for a pomegranate and a Sunday knife. Things in someone's narrative reference themselves-cheese, frets, cylindrical feeds.
'Where's your boyfriend?' Logan's lips are tight, focused around the bottle, around morphemes, bitterness. Once you ripped open a buckeye and ate it, swallowing the green meat like candy before they called poison control and force-fed you milk. We used to make candy with silver pots and you always licked the spoon. Later all sweets tasted like Madeleines and all we could remember was a rubber manikin we shoved in a furnace.
His eyes track your glance upwards. Everyone hears the X-Box through the open window, but only the two of you know it covers groaning, sweat, Kitty's curling toes. Three times orgasm, the snap of a latex condom, gloves, something strawberry flavored.
'My boyfriend,' you say. Logan's nose can tell him where Bobby is; it told you, and it's not even on your face. You remember the hot sweaty humidity of your face behind a plastic Halloween mask, of sticking your tongue through the mouth slit and feeling a sharp sting with the retraction. Later the American officers gave us chocolate bars we were too malnourished to eat.
This is it. You stand in the early morning, wagging your hips and knowing that Logan's eyes follow the slap you give the curve of your ass with the flat of your hand. You've had seven beers and a shot of Remy's bourbon. Logan's face is unreadable when you see it, but there are ( ) _____________ in the human _____________, and these are just three ( + ). Everything is protons and electrons, or neutrons and quarks. You ionize the air.
To have a man spread across a bed like so much warm butter, we used to see that all the time, back in Israel, before Gabrielle and Moira. Back before we decided that Charles didn't need his legs to love us, but that we needed less of him to love him.
'I think about you all the time,' you say, breath quick, Logan's face superimposed into the picture of a Tel Aviv cafe. Logan's forearms twitch, because they want to grab. You dangle one rounded knee in front of his jeans, summer Lolita with strawberries on your underpants.
Logan's eyes dart away to the raisin sun; something golden cuts into his face. 'Darlin', you don't want to do this.' His hands crinkle at the finger joints; it is a spider folding.
'I've always wanted to fuck myself,' you say, dropping the beer in Charles's flowerbeds. Your hands clamp down, monkey-cymbal hands, tightening on his neck. His breath is hot. Alcohol evaporates from it in wafts. 'You have too.'
***
That is a shallow ringing you hear when you open your eyes, and the sun is neon and blue, no more raisins and singing birds. Heckyll and Jeckyll scared you when you were a kid. Later we would look at the stuffed birds in the museum with a sense of satisfaction for a job well done. Before that you would snatch them from the air and bite the throat first, a because that's the best meat. You ate lots of things that lost their voice first.
Horses, a copper lady, five cigarettes and a blonde with a tight-
'You scared us all there,' Jean's eyes unfocus because she is doing something else. This conversation is half-hearted and she doesn't really care about it. You can crumple a beer can in your hand. You can crumple a beer can with your foot. We cannot crumple a beer can with one synapse, because it is made of aluminum, Charles's metal.
You feel the slide of the hospital gown and know that the sun is gone, and if you roll over to one side, Logan's silhouette, supine and solid, all angles like his face, creates an artificial horizon in your view line.
'I don't think, if you intend to kill yourself, that it's a good idea to take people with you.' Jean's voice is distracted, but not really. Her eyes go elsewhere from her brain attached by a cord you cannot cut. You knew how to tie forty different knots by the time you made Eagle Scout. When they made you a scout in the military, your Corporal took you out and got you drunker than hell. The next day you ripped the spine from a Waffen-SS officer with your bare hands. It was the beer.
You narrow your eyes at Jean's profile. If your hands were free, you would shove three fingers into her cunt and twist until she screamed. You just aren't sure which three fingers they would be. Or plastics. Or a prosthetic that was made of glass. Or maybe just your dick as a hobbyhorse. Later, you would pet her hair and smell her, before she takes a shower and erases you and her and everyone else.
'You have plenty of things to live for,' her voice says: her conversation eyes have moved to focus on you; her eyes; conversation eyes; focused; useful; useful conversation.
When she leaves you in darkness, you tick all the things off on your fingers: there are ( ) _____________________in __________________________. ____________________is just ( ) ___________________.
Plenty of things to live for.
***
"Every language has a word for the sound of cats." (Lyn Hejinian, 'My Life')
END
A/N: I have no idea what I was doing here except that I wanted to create something that challenged the concept of a speaker behind a text. In many ways it is very much Rogue, but then again, it might be Eric, or Cody, or John, and in some places Logan. I know that she's touched other people, and I know that they don't really stay with her the way that this story implies, but I like the idea that her memories could be so muddled.
In fact, the fact that this ISN'T addressed more in canon (and I know it has been, so shut up) is boggling. Like, Rogue should be batshit by now, or a mix of people who create a simulated creature called Rogue, but who isn't really the personality that was born with the body. I see that fanon tries to run with the whole, "Oh, Rogue touched Logan and now she likes cigars but, and I think I even did that, but I think that's a poor covering. Magneto lived through the Holocaust, and we see how well he did with that. How does Rogue process that?
This isn't even close to getting at the idea that these memories might fade over time. It's true that the powers fade (though Carol Danvers' never did), the memories probably do as well, except for maybe, the first few times she did it. Aren't the first times memorable in and of themselves because of what they are? And don't our genuine memories fade? How long would be before Rogue might recall a stray memory that belonged to oh say, Jean, and think that it was hers? Don't we misremember things that we've actually lived through?
The style is supposed to be much like Lyn Hejinian's My Life, a prose poem from the L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E. school of theory. At some point, one must not rely on text to create the narrative, or to create a narrative that is linear. While this story is much more linear than Lyn's work, I strove for the dyspeptic nature of it. No outside character (Logan or Scott or Jean, actually) is actually represented as themselves here, but as parts of themselves, a visor, eyes, forearms, etc.
Oh hell, this AN explains too much. I give up. It's a pheasant!
Fandom: X-Men Movieverse
Warnings: arted R, srs style crap.
Characters: Logan, Rogue (majora), Scott, Jean, Cody, Erik, John (minora), Bobby, Kitty, Gambit (offstage)
A/N: at the end.
Summary: This is it. You stand in the early morning, wagging your hips and knowing that Logan's eyes follow the slap you give the curve of your ass with the flat of your hand. You've had seven beers and a shot of Remy's bourbon.
Potato a fat walnut, the potato with checkered grit, by potato I mean low sunshine. Wheat whose limits are compelled to sing. (Lyn Hejinian, 'My Life')
There are ( ) bones in the human hand. You've broken (+1) of them. When we were children we'd sit on the back steps and pick the seeds out of pomegranates. Later we would know that work made us free.
'You think you can spare one of these?' Logan's fingers are knobby and short. Weeks have given his face shading, angular and wooden. You surrender a six pack. There are ( ) ways to repaint history. This is only (-6).
'I hear you had a rough night.' There is steam from his nostrils. Every summer, wild mustangs swim from Chincoteague to Assateague. When we finished our pomegranates, our mother made us wash off with the garden hose. The water wasn't potable. Who would want to pot water anyway? Later behind the barracks, we smoked cigarettes made from onion skins.
Scott's visor had been admonishing when he said that the beer was okay, and he bought it for you. You are special. Filtered through the green lens of the beer bottle, the rising sun does everything to keep your attention except shower you with raisins and say, 'Two scoops!' Our mother gave us madeleines on the truck ride to the camp; we ate them, not really realizing that she wanted us to remember her.
'You know those aren't your dreams, right?' Logan's eyebrow is independent of his face, what he says. It moves up like green glass. There were bears at the state fair who did this. Your father grounded you for a week when you fed them your bologna sandwich. Later, we would leave Ellis Island a changed man, free, completely understanding the value of every sandwich, bread and meat and cheese.
'When we first met,' is his involuntary start, which resembles the fumblings of a young hunter on the safety. He doesn't carry a bowie knife anymore. Cody has three pocket knives: one for weekdays, one for holidays, and one for church. Later, we found that all metals were ours, except aluminum foil. Instead, the literature of life gave us Foil, and that had been pretty damn funny to us, even if not to Charles.
'When we first met,' his finger closes on the trigger, 'I wouldn't have pegged you for a Miller girl.'
'Girl' makes you feel small, tight, wound up, gum hardened on the bottom of a school desk. Cherry gum.
'I can't taste it,' you say, because you lost your taste buds three weeks ago swallowing fire, deep-throating what Johnny sent you on national television, or at least the local evening news. John probably has it on You Tube by now. Later we will fall in love with a blue woman and give her a ring fashioned from handcuffs.
The sun is less cartoon when the green lens is off. There are ( ) dreams in the human body. This is just (+2) of them. Your hips are slim, girl-like, and those aren't the kind any boy you know likes. You wish for the rounded bones of time.
His speech skips a beat, warbles, whistles, wheedles. Long grass bends backwards. You wish for a pomegranate and a Sunday knife. Things in someone's narrative reference themselves-cheese, frets, cylindrical feeds.
'Where's your boyfriend?' Logan's lips are tight, focused around the bottle, around morphemes, bitterness. Once you ripped open a buckeye and ate it, swallowing the green meat like candy before they called poison control and force-fed you milk. We used to make candy with silver pots and you always licked the spoon. Later all sweets tasted like Madeleines and all we could remember was a rubber manikin we shoved in a furnace.
His eyes track your glance upwards. Everyone hears the X-Box through the open window, but only the two of you know it covers groaning, sweat, Kitty's curling toes. Three times orgasm, the snap of a latex condom, gloves, something strawberry flavored.
'My boyfriend,' you say. Logan's nose can tell him where Bobby is; it told you, and it's not even on your face. You remember the hot sweaty humidity of your face behind a plastic Halloween mask, of sticking your tongue through the mouth slit and feeling a sharp sting with the retraction. Later the American officers gave us chocolate bars we were too malnourished to eat.
This is it. You stand in the early morning, wagging your hips and knowing that Logan's eyes follow the slap you give the curve of your ass with the flat of your hand. You've had seven beers and a shot of Remy's bourbon. Logan's face is unreadable when you see it, but there are ( ) _____________ in the human _____________, and these are just three ( + ). Everything is protons and electrons, or neutrons and quarks. You ionize the air.
To have a man spread across a bed like so much warm butter, we used to see that all the time, back in Israel, before Gabrielle and Moira. Back before we decided that Charles didn't need his legs to love us, but that we needed less of him to love him.
'I think about you all the time,' you say, breath quick, Logan's face superimposed into the picture of a Tel Aviv cafe. Logan's forearms twitch, because they want to grab. You dangle one rounded knee in front of his jeans, summer Lolita with strawberries on your underpants.
Logan's eyes dart away to the raisin sun; something golden cuts into his face. 'Darlin', you don't want to do this.' His hands crinkle at the finger joints; it is a spider folding.
'I've always wanted to fuck myself,' you say, dropping the beer in Charles's flowerbeds. Your hands clamp down, monkey-cymbal hands, tightening on his neck. His breath is hot. Alcohol evaporates from it in wafts. 'You have too.'
***
That is a shallow ringing you hear when you open your eyes, and the sun is neon and blue, no more raisins and singing birds. Heckyll and Jeckyll scared you when you were a kid. Later we would look at the stuffed birds in the museum with a sense of satisfaction for a job well done. Before that you would snatch them from the air and bite the throat first, a because that's the best meat. You ate lots of things that lost their voice first.
Horses, a copper lady, five cigarettes and a blonde with a tight-
'You scared us all there,' Jean's eyes unfocus because she is doing something else. This conversation is half-hearted and she doesn't really care about it. You can crumple a beer can in your hand. You can crumple a beer can with your foot. We cannot crumple a beer can with one synapse, because it is made of aluminum, Charles's metal.
You feel the slide of the hospital gown and know that the sun is gone, and if you roll over to one side, Logan's silhouette, supine and solid, all angles like his face, creates an artificial horizon in your view line.
'I don't think, if you intend to kill yourself, that it's a good idea to take people with you.' Jean's voice is distracted, but not really. Her eyes go elsewhere from her brain attached by a cord you cannot cut. You knew how to tie forty different knots by the time you made Eagle Scout. When they made you a scout in the military, your Corporal took you out and got you drunker than hell. The next day you ripped the spine from a Waffen-SS officer with your bare hands. It was the beer.
You narrow your eyes at Jean's profile. If your hands were free, you would shove three fingers into her cunt and twist until she screamed. You just aren't sure which three fingers they would be. Or plastics. Or a prosthetic that was made of glass. Or maybe just your dick as a hobbyhorse. Later, you would pet her hair and smell her, before she takes a shower and erases you and her and everyone else.
'You have plenty of things to live for,' her voice says: her conversation eyes have moved to focus on you; her eyes; conversation eyes; focused; useful; useful conversation.
When she leaves you in darkness, you tick all the things off on your fingers: there are ( ) _____________________in __________________________. ____________________is just ( ) ___________________.
Plenty of things to live for.
***
"Every language has a word for the sound of cats." (Lyn Hejinian, 'My Life')
END
A/N: I have no idea what I was doing here except that I wanted to create something that challenged the concept of a speaker behind a text. In many ways it is very much Rogue, but then again, it might be Eric, or Cody, or John, and in some places Logan. I know that she's touched other people, and I know that they don't really stay with her the way that this story implies, but I like the idea that her memories could be so muddled.
In fact, the fact that this ISN'T addressed more in canon (and I know it has been, so shut up) is boggling. Like, Rogue should be batshit by now, or a mix of people who create a simulated creature called Rogue, but who isn't really the personality that was born with the body. I see that fanon tries to run with the whole, "Oh, Rogue touched Logan and now she likes cigars but, and I think I even did that, but I think that's a poor covering. Magneto lived through the Holocaust, and we see how well he did with that. How does Rogue process that?
This isn't even close to getting at the idea that these memories might fade over time. It's true that the powers fade (though Carol Danvers' never did), the memories probably do as well, except for maybe, the first few times she did it. Aren't the first times memorable in and of themselves because of what they are? And don't our genuine memories fade? How long would be before Rogue might recall a stray memory that belonged to oh say, Jean, and think that it was hers? Don't we misremember things that we've actually lived through?
The style is supposed to be much like Lyn Hejinian's My Life, a prose poem from the L.A.N.G.U.A.G.E. school of theory. At some point, one must not rely on text to create the narrative, or to create a narrative that is linear. While this story is much more linear than Lyn's work, I strove for the dyspeptic nature of it. No outside character (Logan or Scott or Jean, actually) is actually represented as themselves here, but as parts of themselves, a visor, eyes, forearms, etc.
Oh hell, this AN explains too much. I give up. It's a pheasant!