only living out, Repo, Nathan/Graverobber, past, needcuddlesquidJanuary 27 2009, 04:04:40 UTC
Sort of a sequel to this. * It didn't take him long at all to learn the kid's lullaby. He'd lived his entire life with the bizarre rhythms of the city, and it was useful having songs to keep time with the life around him, to distinguish the important voices from the drones who called and whined for zydrate.
What he didn't tell her was that he'd heard the song before.
He'd been a lot younger, a lot more brazen in the stupid ways only kids could be. The tomb was right there, door open, no security. Easiest mark he'd ever hit in his life.
Except for the mourner.
And oh holy fuck, that was the GeneCo patch on his black sleeve. Metal studs winked at him in the flickering light. Fuck, he'd interrupted a repo man. He was dead. He'd be meat on the pile before he could move for the door--
But the lumpy leather mask was on the stone floor next to him, and the repo man was on his knees, bent and twisted and crying like a lost child.
He'd been a stupid kid, but still smart enough to know that graverobbers who messed with GeneCo employees ended up as torture toys for Rotti Largo's brats. So he took one step backward, two, and then turned to clear the doorway.
Wait.
Before he could bolt, the repo man had him, arms clamping around him like iron (holy shit, meat on the pile). He couldn't turn to face the monster, could barely breathe, had to try frantically to remember some prayer to a god he thought might help.
And then he realized the man's forehead was pressed into his shoulder, hot breath tangling in his long hair.
Marni, he whispered, his voice like a broken bell. Oh Marni, don't go, don't leave me.
The guy had to be crazy. Z'd to hell and back, brand-new GeneCo eyes infected and rotting, some shit--just clean out of his fucking mind. Not to mention there was something hard pressing into the small of his back, and it didn't have a scalpel's edge to it. Shit.
I, he'd heard himself squeak, and uh.
Marni, please... Now there was warmth against his cheek, damp lips next to his ear. Don't you remember?
And then, with a hitching exhale, came the notes that thrummed through his body so deeply they'd haunt him worse than his own sins: the repo man was singing.
He didn't know the name the man used and for a terrible moment he wasn't sure he cared--the voice went into him uncomfortably deep, making the muscles in his back and arms hum and ache. It was intimate, too intimate, like he'd been pulled in to ride shotgun inside someone else's kisses. It was hot and wrong and it made him feel like his head was full of cotton.
When the two o'clock sirens finally sounded and the man's grip eased up enough to let him skitter back to the safety of the graveyard, he had to curl up in a stone box next to a dead guy for an hour. He could taste someone else's tears in the corner of his mouth.
Sometimes he'd swear he heard that song when he was collecting parts and zydrate. He heard it when he slipped fishlike through Sanitarium Square, picking pockets, or when he looked up from a corpse and saw a house with warmly lit windows, or when he fucked girls who pressed their foreheads against his shoulder as they came.
But when the kid taught it to him as a lullaby, something other than fear settled into him when the ghost feeling of a grieving man's arms closed around him again.
Her voice traveled across high soft notes and the memory was all dark low tones, but they sang in perfect harmony.
*
It didn't take him long at all to learn the kid's lullaby. He'd lived his entire life with the bizarre rhythms of the city, and it was useful having songs to keep time with the life around him, to distinguish the important voices from the drones who called and whined for zydrate.
What he didn't tell her was that he'd heard the song before.
He'd been a lot younger, a lot more brazen in the stupid ways only kids could be. The tomb was right there, door open, no security. Easiest mark he'd ever hit in his life.
Except for the mourner.
And oh holy fuck, that was the GeneCo patch on his black sleeve. Metal studs winked at him in the flickering light. Fuck, he'd interrupted a repo man. He was dead. He'd be meat on the pile before he could move for the door--
But the lumpy leather mask was on the stone floor next to him, and the repo man was on his knees, bent and twisted and crying like a lost child.
He'd been a stupid kid, but still smart enough to know that graverobbers who messed with GeneCo employees ended up as torture toys for Rotti Largo's brats. So he took one step backward, two, and then turned to clear the doorway.
Wait.
Before he could bolt, the repo man had him, arms clamping around him like iron (holy shit, meat on the pile). He couldn't turn to face the monster, could barely breathe, had to try frantically to remember some prayer to a god he thought might help.
And then he realized the man's forehead was pressed into his shoulder, hot breath tangling in his long hair.
Marni, he whispered, his voice like a broken bell. Oh Marni, don't go, don't leave me.
The guy had to be crazy. Z'd to hell and back, brand-new GeneCo eyes infected and rotting, some shit--just clean out of his fucking mind. Not to mention there was something hard pressing into the small of his back, and it didn't have a scalpel's edge to it. Shit.
I, he'd heard himself squeak, and uh.
Marni, please... Now there was warmth against his cheek, damp lips next to his ear. Don't you remember?
And then, with a hitching exhale, came the notes that thrummed through his body so deeply they'd haunt him worse than his own sins: the repo man was singing.
He didn't know the name the man used and for a terrible moment he wasn't sure he cared--the voice went into him uncomfortably deep, making the muscles in his back and arms hum and ache. It was intimate, too intimate, like he'd been pulled in to ride shotgun inside someone else's kisses. It was hot and wrong and it made him feel like his head was full of cotton.
When the two o'clock sirens finally sounded and the man's grip eased up enough to let him skitter back to the safety of the graveyard, he had to curl up in a stone box next to a dead guy for an hour. He could taste someone else's tears in the corner of his mouth.
Sometimes he'd swear he heard that song when he was collecting parts and zydrate. He heard it when he slipped fishlike through Sanitarium Square, picking pockets, or when he looked up from a corpse and saw a house with warmly lit windows, or when he fucked girls who pressed their foreheads against his shoulder as they came.
But when the kid taught it to him as a lullaby, something other than fear settled into him when the ghost feeling of a grieving man's arms closed around him again.
Her voice traveled across high soft notes and the memory was all dark low tones, but they sang in perfect harmony.
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I mean, really, yeah.
There's definite rocking in you.
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