fic: excavations [1/5]
Title: Excavations (1/5)
Rating: PG for now, R eventually
Word Count: 1301 for this chapter
Summary: James was dressed like an adventure hero, like an H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne explorer: ginger beard and scuffed boots and shortness and dirt-smudges under his nails. He looked nothing at all like a proper professor of archaeology in this still-new twentieth century, no tidy waistcoat or respectable tweed.
Michael’s treacherous heart-and other body parts-noticed every single flex and curve of compact powerful muscle.
Notes: for kernezelda. (Not actually your birthday fic; I just felt like you deserved a shiny present.) Imagine this all unfolding in some sort of nebulous late 1920s/early 1930s archaeologist/professor AU; picture, perhaps, Indiana Jones as university professor in Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade. Also Michael works on music history because of, well, his excitement about musicals and music and accordion-playing skills and so on.
In this chapter: artifacts and office hours, bandages and smiles.
One: a horse is a horse, of course
A travel-weary dark-haired Scottish pixie, grinning and wind-blown, appeared in Michael’s tranquil university office halfway through a sunny summer afternoon; appeared, in fact, while Michael was marking first-day diagnostic quizzes and swearing under his breath at the misuse of Latin quotes. He set down the pen. “Where’ve you been?”
“Hadrian’s Wall.” James McAvoy, fellow faculty member and most likely not actual supernatural creature, flashed him a smile. James was dressed like an adventure hero, like an H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne explorer: ginger beard and scuffed boots and shortness and dirt-smudges under his nails. He looked nothing at all like a proper professor of archaeology in this still-new twentieth century, no tidy waistcoat or respectable tweed. Michael’s treacherous heart-and other body parts-noticed every single flex and curve of compact powerful muscle.
Secure behind his desk and typewriter, he cleared his throat. “You’re late.”
“I know.”
“We had a faculty meeting yesterday. Classes start today. Dean Vaughn said that you-”
“-that I’m adorable and have excellent teaching evaluations and bring us lots of publicity and shiny artifacts to peruse at everyone’s leisure. Symposium on post-Roman Britain next month? I’ll talk about bath-house traditions. I brought you a present.”
“I work on musical history and historiography,” Michael said, resolutely ignoring thoughts about his fellow professor in the bath, resolutely telling his brain and other areas that James flirted with everyone like breathing and the line meant nothing at all, “not personal hygiene. And you’re lucky you are adorable, because you’re in trouble.”
“I’m not. I saw him in the hallway. Begged for forgiveness. Here.” The present was a small slim bronze statuette, a horse in motion, one ear slightly squashed by time: eighth century AD, Michael thought, probably that surviving Iron Age La Tène influence combined with distant memories of Rome; and the scholar in him wanted to scribble observations about animal symbology and equine worship cults and metalworking techniques, but mostly he was captivated by the graceful lines and the flow of mane and tail and outflung legs, wild and free.
He put the sculpture on his desk. Beside the typewriter. Next to the stack of antique coins, and the shard of pottery, and the single terminal-end from a broken gold torc. That’d been last time. He sometimes suspected that James was trying to court him through artifacts; he sometimes suspected that James, for all the gregarious kindness toward others, knew too much about loneliness. He didn’t know why he thought so. Some emotion, maybe, behind blue eyes.
“It looks good there,” James said. The afternoon sunlight fell into his hair, and stayed put in a tangle of gold and dark waves. “You didn’t say no, y’know, about the symposium. You’ve been working on that paper about bardic instruments and training, I know you have, we can make some sort of connection about moments of intimacy and metaphorical nakedness in the Celtic tradition.”
“How do you know what I’ve-would you want something about intimate spaces and the importance of physical sensation? Instruments and kingship rituals. You have class in twenty minutes.”
“And I came to see you first.”
“Twenty minutes, James!”
That smile flickered like a candle on a windy day. “S’pose you're right,” James said, and Michael's heart hurt quite suddenly, quite dreadfully, for no readily identifiable reason. “I'll go.”
“Wait.” Please. Make the hurt go away. By being here. By smiling again. At me. “Thank you for-” He waved at the tiny horse, posed mid-flight. “This.”
“Not a problem.”
“You-are you hurt?”
“It's a scrape!”
“You're bleeding!”
“Ah…well, all right, that might be true.” Wasn't a scrape. More of a gash, long and half-healed, visible below a rolled-up shirt-sleeve. James looked as if he were debating whether to hide it, in the honeyed spill of oak and sunlight and academic dust.
“Sit down.” Michael fished the first-aid kit out of his top desk-drawer. “Five minutes. You daft Scottish dime-novel superman. What was it this time?”
“All burly-thewed and mighty-muscled, am I? A rock.”
“Just a rock.”
“A terribly malevolent and pointy rock…engraved with a very unpoetic Latin death curse…”
“With a what? -did you check for poison? How's this?”
“Of course I did, don't fuss.” James flexed his hand, swung his arm: testing the stretch of bandages across sun-pinkened freckled skin. “Perfect. Thanks. Will you be here when I'm done with class?”
“My office hours will be over by then.”
“Will you be here when I'm done with class?”
“Are you planning to bleed on my floor again?”
“Ah,” James said, and hopped off the desk, which got instantly more lonely. “Right, then. Going.”
Michael relented. “I'll be here when you're done with class.”
James's smile came back. Full force. Illuminated the world.
“Ten minutes,” Michael pointed out, not as forcefully as he could’ve because of that smile and the answering lift in his own chest.
James ran out the door, but paused to stick his head back in and yell, “Drinks on me, and let’s argue about Professor Jones’s latest Grail-quest theory!”
“Go!”
Alone in his office, Michael tucked the first-aid kit away and looked at his hands, briefly-they’d just been pressing snowy bandages over James’s blood-and then sat down hard in his chair. It held him up. Professorial comfort.
He glanced at his new acquisition. James never brought him anything that’d be worth too much or rare enough to require a place in a museum; not that this tiny sculpture with one bent ear wouldn’t belong there, but James knew as well as he did the value of making artifacts available for others to study.
James had been a prestigious hire for them, for this relatively new university in London; James had made a remarkable reputation for himself back home in Glasgow, young and exuberant and impressively right about the locations of several Iron Age burial mounds, passionate about teaching and archaeology and stories out of the past. He’d been installed in the office beside Michael’s for a year now. Michael could not remember ever smiling, wanting to smile, wanting to stay up late and debate the proper categorization of Anglo-Saxon leechbooks with someone over multiple pints at the university pub, more than he had these past months.
James taught class the same way: open-hearted, exuberant and encouraging, full of physical gestures and demonstrations and leaps of insight. Michael knew himself to be good at their joint profession; he was an engaging lecturer, he loved his work, he could be convinced to demonstrate adaptations of contemporary radio hits on replicated classical instruments, accordions and lutes and pipes. James left him breathless.
He did not know what James wanted, if James wanted anything, from him. Bandages and smiles. Someone to startle with gifts. The tiny bronze horse raced forever in place atop his solid desk, shimmering as it captured a sunbeam.
He had another half hour to go in his listed office hours, and then ninety more minutes before James would be done. Dusk would be inching on, by then: sidling velvet intimations of night. James would buy him a drink; Michael would get the next round and would try to ensure that James ate something along the way, because despite vast willingness to consume good whiskey James was kind of a tiny person and consequently a surprising lightweight. James was good at self-monitoring, mostly, but nevertheless: Michael wanted to take care of him.
Michael quite often wanted to take care of him, in fact. Bandages and smiles, he thought again. He knew that James didn’t need taking care of. Of course he knew.
Two hours, then. He eyed the ominous ink-dark sea of student quizzes. Squared his shoulders. He could probably be done just before James came to find him.
Rating: PG for now, R eventually
Word Count: 1301 for this chapter
Summary: James was dressed like an adventure hero, like an H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne explorer: ginger beard and scuffed boots and shortness and dirt-smudges under his nails. He looked nothing at all like a proper professor of archaeology in this still-new twentieth century, no tidy waistcoat or respectable tweed.
Michael’s treacherous heart-and other body parts-noticed every single flex and curve of compact powerful muscle.
Notes: for kernezelda. (Not actually your birthday fic; I just felt like you deserved a shiny present.) Imagine this all unfolding in some sort of nebulous late 1920s/early 1930s archaeologist/professor AU; picture, perhaps, Indiana Jones as university professor in Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Last Crusade. Also Michael works on music history because of, well, his excitement about musicals and music and accordion-playing skills and so on.
In this chapter: artifacts and office hours, bandages and smiles.
One: a horse is a horse, of course
A travel-weary dark-haired Scottish pixie, grinning and wind-blown, appeared in Michael’s tranquil university office halfway through a sunny summer afternoon; appeared, in fact, while Michael was marking first-day diagnostic quizzes and swearing under his breath at the misuse of Latin quotes. He set down the pen. “Where’ve you been?”
“Hadrian’s Wall.” James McAvoy, fellow faculty member and most likely not actual supernatural creature, flashed him a smile. James was dressed like an adventure hero, like an H. Rider Haggard or Jules Verne explorer: ginger beard and scuffed boots and shortness and dirt-smudges under his nails. He looked nothing at all like a proper professor of archaeology in this still-new twentieth century, no tidy waistcoat or respectable tweed. Michael’s treacherous heart-and other body parts-noticed every single flex and curve of compact powerful muscle.
Secure behind his desk and typewriter, he cleared his throat. “You’re late.”
“I know.”
“We had a faculty meeting yesterday. Classes start today. Dean Vaughn said that you-”
“-that I’m adorable and have excellent teaching evaluations and bring us lots of publicity and shiny artifacts to peruse at everyone’s leisure. Symposium on post-Roman Britain next month? I’ll talk about bath-house traditions. I brought you a present.”
“I work on musical history and historiography,” Michael said, resolutely ignoring thoughts about his fellow professor in the bath, resolutely telling his brain and other areas that James flirted with everyone like breathing and the line meant nothing at all, “not personal hygiene. And you’re lucky you are adorable, because you’re in trouble.”
“I’m not. I saw him in the hallway. Begged for forgiveness. Here.” The present was a small slim bronze statuette, a horse in motion, one ear slightly squashed by time: eighth century AD, Michael thought, probably that surviving Iron Age La Tène influence combined with distant memories of Rome; and the scholar in him wanted to scribble observations about animal symbology and equine worship cults and metalworking techniques, but mostly he was captivated by the graceful lines and the flow of mane and tail and outflung legs, wild and free.
He put the sculpture on his desk. Beside the typewriter. Next to the stack of antique coins, and the shard of pottery, and the single terminal-end from a broken gold torc. That’d been last time. He sometimes suspected that James was trying to court him through artifacts; he sometimes suspected that James, for all the gregarious kindness toward others, knew too much about loneliness. He didn’t know why he thought so. Some emotion, maybe, behind blue eyes.
“It looks good there,” James said. The afternoon sunlight fell into his hair, and stayed put in a tangle of gold and dark waves. “You didn’t say no, y’know, about the symposium. You’ve been working on that paper about bardic instruments and training, I know you have, we can make some sort of connection about moments of intimacy and metaphorical nakedness in the Celtic tradition.”
“How do you know what I’ve-would you want something about intimate spaces and the importance of physical sensation? Instruments and kingship rituals. You have class in twenty minutes.”
“And I came to see you first.”
“Twenty minutes, James!”
That smile flickered like a candle on a windy day. “S’pose you're right,” James said, and Michael's heart hurt quite suddenly, quite dreadfully, for no readily identifiable reason. “I'll go.”
“Wait.” Please. Make the hurt go away. By being here. By smiling again. At me. “Thank you for-” He waved at the tiny horse, posed mid-flight. “This.”
“Not a problem.”
“You-are you hurt?”
“It's a scrape!”
“You're bleeding!”
“Ah…well, all right, that might be true.” Wasn't a scrape. More of a gash, long and half-healed, visible below a rolled-up shirt-sleeve. James looked as if he were debating whether to hide it, in the honeyed spill of oak and sunlight and academic dust.
“Sit down.” Michael fished the first-aid kit out of his top desk-drawer. “Five minutes. You daft Scottish dime-novel superman. What was it this time?”
“All burly-thewed and mighty-muscled, am I? A rock.”
“Just a rock.”
“A terribly malevolent and pointy rock…engraved with a very unpoetic Latin death curse…”
“With a what? -did you check for poison? How's this?”
“Of course I did, don't fuss.” James flexed his hand, swung his arm: testing the stretch of bandages across sun-pinkened freckled skin. “Perfect. Thanks. Will you be here when I'm done with class?”
“My office hours will be over by then.”
“Will you be here when I'm done with class?”
“Are you planning to bleed on my floor again?”
“Ah,” James said, and hopped off the desk, which got instantly more lonely. “Right, then. Going.”
Michael relented. “I'll be here when you're done with class.”
James's smile came back. Full force. Illuminated the world.
“Ten minutes,” Michael pointed out, not as forcefully as he could’ve because of that smile and the answering lift in his own chest.
James ran out the door, but paused to stick his head back in and yell, “Drinks on me, and let’s argue about Professor Jones’s latest Grail-quest theory!”
“Go!”
Alone in his office, Michael tucked the first-aid kit away and looked at his hands, briefly-they’d just been pressing snowy bandages over James’s blood-and then sat down hard in his chair. It held him up. Professorial comfort.
He glanced at his new acquisition. James never brought him anything that’d be worth too much or rare enough to require a place in a museum; not that this tiny sculpture with one bent ear wouldn’t belong there, but James knew as well as he did the value of making artifacts available for others to study.
James had been a prestigious hire for them, for this relatively new university in London; James had made a remarkable reputation for himself back home in Glasgow, young and exuberant and impressively right about the locations of several Iron Age burial mounds, passionate about teaching and archaeology and stories out of the past. He’d been installed in the office beside Michael’s for a year now. Michael could not remember ever smiling, wanting to smile, wanting to stay up late and debate the proper categorization of Anglo-Saxon leechbooks with someone over multiple pints at the university pub, more than he had these past months.
James taught class the same way: open-hearted, exuberant and encouraging, full of physical gestures and demonstrations and leaps of insight. Michael knew himself to be good at their joint profession; he was an engaging lecturer, he loved his work, he could be convinced to demonstrate adaptations of contemporary radio hits on replicated classical instruments, accordions and lutes and pipes. James left him breathless.
He did not know what James wanted, if James wanted anything, from him. Bandages and smiles. Someone to startle with gifts. The tiny bronze horse raced forever in place atop his solid desk, shimmering as it captured a sunbeam.
He had another half hour to go in his listed office hours, and then ninety more minutes before James would be done. Dusk would be inching on, by then: sidling velvet intimations of night. James would buy him a drink; Michael would get the next round and would try to ensure that James ate something along the way, because despite vast willingness to consume good whiskey James was kind of a tiny person and consequently a surprising lightweight. James was good at self-monitoring, mostly, but nevertheless: Michael wanted to take care of him.
Michael quite often wanted to take care of him, in fact. Bandages and smiles, he thought again. He knew that James didn’t need taking care of. Of course he knew.
Two hours, then. He eyed the ominous ink-dark sea of student quizzes. Squared his shoulders. He could probably be done just before James came to find him.