Fic: Been here before been here forever
title: Been here before been here forever
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 730
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier. mention of Sebastian Shaw [not named]
rating: R
notes: Part of the universe of Knife and Needle and Rope, in which we get another glimpse of Erik's terrible/terrifying past. Title and cut text from "Inertia Creeps" by Massive Attack.
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.
Erik dreams of sweet copper burning his tongue, of steel and slivering pain.
He knows where he is. A scratchy blanket and springs creaking in his lumpy mattress. The sounds of drunken brawls just outside. He's had to have the glass replaced twice in the past six months. The draft in the room throws a cold arm over him. He huddles in on himself.
He never hears the soft wail rising from his own lips.
The dreams never tell a complete story - but for Erik the story is as immediate as the scars in his own skin. Cigarette burns up and down his arms. Dark lines encircling wrist and ankle.
The long gashes down his back that have healed badly, leaving him looking like a patchwork of sense and memory and painful experience. Vivid purple lines, kinked and roughly sewn back together. Shoulder to hip, sharp hairpin turn and bright blood, and then back up again.
A flash of a smile, and even in his sleep Erik recoils and rolls over and hides his face. A smile with far too many teeth. Dark eyes hooded with mania and intent and eros/thanatos like a drug flowing through Erik's veins. An overwhelming fire of disgust and need and the ever-present fear, that gnaws at Erik's heart and leaves him confused and shaking.
Even here, he cannot bear to put a name to that smile.
That way lies madness, and he wants something else. Oblivion maybe. Not insanity.
A voice in his dreams. That's a new development. A strange accent. Blue eyes. A soft hiss of pain/pleasure and the slither of oversized jacket onto a small frame. Charles's easy smile, tearstains on his face, and the almost-music of his voice as he asks ever so politely for finer and finer detail work.
The great black phoenix spreads its wings over the pale skin of Charles's back. Until now, the leading edges are still little more than roughly-sketched lines and arches, hints at the glory of the wings once completed. He's been asked to concentrate on something else. Erik is almost done with the lower half of the tattoo, with the feathers and the great tail that ends in a spiral in the small of Charles's back.
Erik knows from personal experience that there are too many nerves there, in the area just above the gluteal muscles. He knows about sensitivity, about needles pricking and tracing out dark trails. Blood? Ink?
Does it matter?
The old memories of smile and steel and straightedge razor flow away, below the surface of subconscious and dream, and Erik finds himself chasing blue instead. Blue eyes filled with shadow and a smile full of promises.
Charles turning away from painkillers. The way he curls in on himself on the bench, reading books as Erik works. Sometimes he reads the words out loud and sometimes he simply devours the words, silent and avid. No rhyme or reason to his choices - from Hugo to McCaffrey to Palahniuk to Dawkins - and every book worn and battered in a good way, as if read again and again and savored every time.
Erik takes a deep breath and sleep comes for him this time, a true sleep beyond the reach of his dreams. He would refuse if he could. He wants to dream of Charles falling into his book, wincing over a word or as Erik drives the relentless needle into him, and never complaining. The smile he wears at the end of each session, the pride and satisfaction that Erik has stopped trying to decipher. The almost eager lilt in his voice as he tries to schedule an earlier appointment each time.
Erik craves this, is learning to crave Charles and his easy, silent, patient acceptance of the pain and of the beauty.
In his deepest heart, in the silent canyons of his mind, he knows that nothing good ever comes to him, and Charles is, at best, a beautiful distraction from his torment. He knows that the torment will double and treble once Charles passes out of his life, as he thinks the man inevitably will. He knows he will never really stop suffering.
Erik craves, still, and he dives into sleep and a dark, musical laugh; drowns himself in memory and desire and hatred and the complex and deadly dance of his past and his present.
author: ilovetakahana
word count: approx. 730
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]
characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier. mention of Sebastian Shaw [not named]
rating: R
notes: Part of the universe of Knife and Needle and Rope, in which we get another glimpse of Erik's terrible/terrifying past. Title and cut text from "Inertia Creeps" by Massive Attack.
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.
Erik dreams of sweet copper burning his tongue, of steel and slivering pain.
He knows where he is. A scratchy blanket and springs creaking in his lumpy mattress. The sounds of drunken brawls just outside. He's had to have the glass replaced twice in the past six months. The draft in the room throws a cold arm over him. He huddles in on himself.
He never hears the soft wail rising from his own lips.
The dreams never tell a complete story - but for Erik the story is as immediate as the scars in his own skin. Cigarette burns up and down his arms. Dark lines encircling wrist and ankle.
The long gashes down his back that have healed badly, leaving him looking like a patchwork of sense and memory and painful experience. Vivid purple lines, kinked and roughly sewn back together. Shoulder to hip, sharp hairpin turn and bright blood, and then back up again.
A flash of a smile, and even in his sleep Erik recoils and rolls over and hides his face. A smile with far too many teeth. Dark eyes hooded with mania and intent and eros/thanatos like a drug flowing through Erik's veins. An overwhelming fire of disgust and need and the ever-present fear, that gnaws at Erik's heart and leaves him confused and shaking.
Even here, he cannot bear to put a name to that smile.
That way lies madness, and he wants something else. Oblivion maybe. Not insanity.
A voice in his dreams. That's a new development. A strange accent. Blue eyes. A soft hiss of pain/pleasure and the slither of oversized jacket onto a small frame. Charles's easy smile, tearstains on his face, and the almost-music of his voice as he asks ever so politely for finer and finer detail work.
The great black phoenix spreads its wings over the pale skin of Charles's back. Until now, the leading edges are still little more than roughly-sketched lines and arches, hints at the glory of the wings once completed. He's been asked to concentrate on something else. Erik is almost done with the lower half of the tattoo, with the feathers and the great tail that ends in a spiral in the small of Charles's back.
Erik knows from personal experience that there are too many nerves there, in the area just above the gluteal muscles. He knows about sensitivity, about needles pricking and tracing out dark trails. Blood? Ink?
Does it matter?
The old memories of smile and steel and straightedge razor flow away, below the surface of subconscious and dream, and Erik finds himself chasing blue instead. Blue eyes filled with shadow and a smile full of promises.
Charles turning away from painkillers. The way he curls in on himself on the bench, reading books as Erik works. Sometimes he reads the words out loud and sometimes he simply devours the words, silent and avid. No rhyme or reason to his choices - from Hugo to McCaffrey to Palahniuk to Dawkins - and every book worn and battered in a good way, as if read again and again and savored every time.
Erik takes a deep breath and sleep comes for him this time, a true sleep beyond the reach of his dreams. He would refuse if he could. He wants to dream of Charles falling into his book, wincing over a word or as Erik drives the relentless needle into him, and never complaining. The smile he wears at the end of each session, the pride and satisfaction that Erik has stopped trying to decipher. The almost eager lilt in his voice as he tries to schedule an earlier appointment each time.
Erik craves this, is learning to crave Charles and his easy, silent, patient acceptance of the pain and of the beauty.
In his deepest heart, in the silent canyons of his mind, he knows that nothing good ever comes to him, and Charles is, at best, a beautiful distraction from his torment. He knows that the torment will double and treble once Charles passes out of his life, as he thinks the man inevitably will. He knows he will never really stop suffering.
Erik craves, still, and he dives into sleep and a dark, musical laugh; drowns himself in memory and desire and hatred and the complex and deadly dance of his past and his present.