Fic: Doggerel (X-Men: First Class, R)
title: Doggerel
author: ilovetakahana
word count: 575
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr
rating: R
notes: Part of the universe of Knife and Needle and Rope, in which we get to meet Erik properly. Takes place some time after the previous story, and written primarily on 5 November, hence the Guy Fawkes and V for Vendetta references.
Warning for basically most serial killer / murder mystery tropes and everything else that might be associated with the idea of a dark version of Charles Xavier.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org.
Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot
Erik looks up, and raises his hands reflexively, away from his work.
The man sprawled out on the couch in front of him is murmuring under his breath.
He has a quiet voice. Strangely sweet and deeply melodious, even if he’s simply saying a child’s nursery rhyme. Little more than some half-composed foolishness, long since sanitized for after the fact.
It takes Erik a moment to master himself once again, to look back down to the painstaking work taking shape under his hands, to the client’s freckled skin and the long lines of ink. He takes up the soft rag from the basin of lukewarm water on his work table, squeezes out the excess, and passes it over the crimson blood welling up. Strong contrast of red and ivory and ink so dark it’s almost more than black.
And it is the most unexpected thing when he suddenly hears himself murmuring: “Will you keep going?”
The man on the couch cranes around to look, and those electric eyes laser in on Erik, fathomless shocking blue. Eyebrows lifting just a fraction. “Well, tell me what you want to hear.”
That accent chops Erik across the knees. This time, it’s far too pronounced, not at all like when they’d first met and the client had simply been describing the tattoo he wanted. This time, it sounds playful, and the man sounds like he could be laughing although his lips are only slightly quirked right now.
“Music, perhaps? Something you like?” Erik says, amazed that his voice sounds so steady. He rarely feels confident about much else other than this work that he does, that he shifts his attention back onto. “Gets tiring, listening to a needle and to people groaning. I hear them all the time, here.”
“Do you?” the man with the blue eyes asks as he shifts and settles back down. “How interesting. Watch what you say, though. I don’t mind it, but other people might not react so lightly or so well.”
“True.” Mixed signals, Erik thinks. Here before him is a man who intends to wear a phoenix in full flight on his back, a black phoenix, with all the pain and ink that idea entails. A man who doesn’t mind spending long hours on a bench, who barely makes a sound even as needle scrapes too close to bone, even as it passes again and again over battered skin and scars. A man who doesn’t mind the sounds of people groaning.
Erik is inured to it by now, or so he thinks, because every once in a while he still wakes himself up from dreams of himself and a steady stream of no no no please make it stop please just let me die please just let me go please just get it over with.
He takes a deep breath and wills himself back down into calm, into his semblance of calm.
As Erik returns to his work, tracing out the outline of feathers and the long, sweeping curve of a wing, he can feel more than just the vibration of the needle in the skin under his fingers.
The man on the couch is humming something complicated and unexpected.
It’s all he can do to keep his concentration now.
How is it even possible for one man to hum the 1812 Overture and sound like half an orchestra all at once?
author: ilovetakahana
word count: 575
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr
rating: R
notes: Part of the universe of Knife and Needle and Rope, in which we get to meet Erik properly. Takes place some time after the previous story, and written primarily on 5 November, hence the Guy Fawkes and V for Vendetta references.
Warning for basically most serial killer / murder mystery tropes and everything else that might be associated with the idea of a dark version of Charles Xavier.
Also archived at http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org.
Remember remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot
Erik looks up, and raises his hands reflexively, away from his work.
The man sprawled out on the couch in front of him is murmuring under his breath.
He has a quiet voice. Strangely sweet and deeply melodious, even if he’s simply saying a child’s nursery rhyme. Little more than some half-composed foolishness, long since sanitized for after the fact.
It takes Erik a moment to master himself once again, to look back down to the painstaking work taking shape under his hands, to the client’s freckled skin and the long lines of ink. He takes up the soft rag from the basin of lukewarm water on his work table, squeezes out the excess, and passes it over the crimson blood welling up. Strong contrast of red and ivory and ink so dark it’s almost more than black.
And it is the most unexpected thing when he suddenly hears himself murmuring: “Will you keep going?”
The man on the couch cranes around to look, and those electric eyes laser in on Erik, fathomless shocking blue. Eyebrows lifting just a fraction. “Well, tell me what you want to hear.”
That accent chops Erik across the knees. This time, it’s far too pronounced, not at all like when they’d first met and the client had simply been describing the tattoo he wanted. This time, it sounds playful, and the man sounds like he could be laughing although his lips are only slightly quirked right now.
“Music, perhaps? Something you like?” Erik says, amazed that his voice sounds so steady. He rarely feels confident about much else other than this work that he does, that he shifts his attention back onto. “Gets tiring, listening to a needle and to people groaning. I hear them all the time, here.”
“Do you?” the man with the blue eyes asks as he shifts and settles back down. “How interesting. Watch what you say, though. I don’t mind it, but other people might not react so lightly or so well.”
“True.” Mixed signals, Erik thinks. Here before him is a man who intends to wear a phoenix in full flight on his back, a black phoenix, with all the pain and ink that idea entails. A man who doesn’t mind spending long hours on a bench, who barely makes a sound even as needle scrapes too close to bone, even as it passes again and again over battered skin and scars. A man who doesn’t mind the sounds of people groaning.
Erik is inured to it by now, or so he thinks, because every once in a while he still wakes himself up from dreams of himself and a steady stream of no no no please make it stop please just let me die please just let me go please just get it over with.
He takes a deep breath and wills himself back down into calm, into his semblance of calm.
As Erik returns to his work, tracing out the outline of feathers and the long, sweeping curve of a wing, he can feel more than just the vibration of the needle in the skin under his fingers.
The man on the couch is humming something complicated and unexpected.
It’s all he can do to keep his concentration now.
How is it even possible for one man to hum the 1812 Overture and sound like half an orchestra all at once?