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I have to go panic now about schoolwork, but I finished this, and wanted to put it up. Forgive the title, I can't name things for love nor money -_-;
Title: Laid Open And Undone
Rating: R? Ish?
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: James Watson/Nikola Tesla
Summary: Set sometime in the 1960's. The first time Nikola sees James' exoskeleton
Wordcount: 2330
Warnings: Um. Complicated. Sort of dark. I don't know?
Notes: I'm assuming the exoskeletal parts came after the machine itself, for some reason
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Laid Open And Undone
Rating: R? Ish?
Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters/Pairings: James Watson/Nikola Tesla
Summary: Set sometime in the 1960's. The first time Nikola sees James' exoskeleton
Wordcount: 2330
Warnings: Um. Complicated. Sort of dark. I don't know?
Notes: I'm assuming the exoskeletal parts came after the machine itself, for some reason
Disclaimer: Not mine
Laid Open And Undone
"James."
James didn't jump at the voice in the shadows. In part because it was next to impossible to jump, these days, in part because the owner of the voice had been due for some time, was in fact late, but mostly because he wouldn't give the man the satisfaction. Mostly because Nikola was a childish, arrogant man, and delighted in shocking people, and James was far, far too tired these days to play that game anymore.
He turned, hearing the hiss of his legs as he moved, feeling his chin tilt defiantly for no discernible reason as he faced the vampire moving slowly away from the window. He'd have to increase the security yet again, James noted idly. Not to keep Nikola out, as such. But because the vampire made a point of testing it each time he came, in his own way trying to help, and each time as he left, he'd leave some thought or other to improve it.
Just none that could successfully keep him out. But then, there were very, very few people in the world who could match Nikola's abilities in that regard, and James didn't yet begrudge him that.
"Nikola," he sighed, the air of it heavy as it left him. Everything was so heavy, these days. Everything so old and tired and heavy. Decaying, no matter what he did to stop it, his eyes catching every withering line, his mind still spinning dazzling stories within the crumbling shell of his body, and there existed nothing in this world, no drug, no chemical, that could keep the knowledge of that decay from his so-perfect, so-razored senses. He knew. He'd tried.
Nikola wasn't looking at him. Or rather, he was, but not to hear him speak. Not to reach out and greet a friend. Nikola, prowling closer with all a vampire's casual grace, was looking at the braces locked around James' legs, looking at the now so visible proof of James' decay, and the expression in the vampire's face was stunned and almost wild. The expression in his eyes as he looked up to catch James' was shocked, and ripe with fear.
"James," Nikola repeated, soft and quivering as he reached James' side, as he reached out towards the metal cages on James' limbs and jerked to a stop, hand hovering inches away. "James, what ...?"
James smiled. A rich dark bubble of humour, of black delight. Nikola, who so delighted in shocking people, so stunned now by James. So shocked in his turn. "You've been gone for most of a decade, Nikola," he reminded, clipped and perhaps a little bitter. "Things tend to change in that amount of time, for most of us."
Of course, Nikola had been gone for much longer than that, officially. Nikola had died over twenty years ago, and supposedly no-one had seen him since. Supposedly. But James had helped Nikola through his secret war, and James had quietly arranged for medicine to find its way to certain drop points, and for over a decade a vampire had crept into his Sanctuary every couple of years, snuck into James' rooms and brought a whisper of the past with him, and the sly glimmer of old friendships, and casually offered pointers for better security.
James wasn't naive, of course. He knew full well that Nikola was simply keeping his bread buttered, knew full well that whatever feelings of friendship Nikola had -and he did have them- would always be second to Nikola's needs of the moment, but still. For more than a decade, James had enjoyed the touch of something old and familiar and solid, snuck in little flashes to his door with an impish grin, and then ... nothing. For ten years. Nothing. He was, perhaps, a little bitter. He was, perhaps, a little tired of friends leaving him behind.
"James, what is this?" the vampire asked again, stooping to study the exoskeleton, as ever perfectly willing to sacrifice tact for knowledge, his clever, scientist's fingers running over the scaffolds of metal that kept James upright in this world these days, so long after he should have been horizontal, so long after he should have been another imprint in the earth. Nikola crouched beside him, all grace and curiosity and rich, stunned worry, and James found himself looking down at him with something close to pity. Found the bitterness fading, as hard to keep up as everything else these days, and his hand reaching out to rest on the vampire's shoulder.
"It has become ... necessary," he explained, very quietly. "The mechanism works admirably to keep my organs and soft tissues functioning, but I'm afraid my skeleton was never going to hold up to this age." He smiled, a flicker barely there, and ran one finger over Nikola's ever-smooth cheek, his ever-youthful features. Like Helen's. Like John's. Forever foreign to his own. "I have become decrepit in your absence, my friend," he whispered, very softly, with some slow deep thing in it that might have been humour, and might, just possibly, have been pain. "Far more slowly than most, but still ..."
Nikola looked up at him, a depth of pain shockingly deep for a moment, a chasm of loss that stunned James in his turn all over again, and then it was gone. Then it was wiped away, as if it had never been, and only a light, teasing grin in its place. Only that arrogant, self-assured little smile that marked Nikola's passage through the world.
"Oh, come now," the vampire said, standing once more, reaching out in his turn to touch James' cheek, to touch the still-youthful visage that disguised his decay from the world. For all James could feel his body slowly crumbling under the weight of years, for all he could measure every beat of the machine that fought against it, none of it showed, just yet, in his face. In his eyes, or his hands, as young looking as Nikola's own where they lay against the vampire's cheek. Though his bones creaked in weariness, shored up by metal and leather, James knew he still looked so very, very young.
"Not so decrepit," Nikola whispered, a laughing purr of seduction, an old, patterned rhythm to paper over the cracks in their facade. The same steps they'd paced in time since the 19th century, a little faded now from disuse, a little warmer and more tired. The same old dance, save that James now was lamed. Save that James, in this moment, suddenly couldn't bear it.
"I can't hide it anymore," James hissed back, fiercely, desperately. Reaching out to seize Nikola's arms, to seize hold of this elusive, immortal creature, to see the echoes of the past in every clear, smooth line of the vampire's face, and suddenly hating it. Suddenly hating the face of a friend that laughed at him out of the past, that mocked his every effort to keep up, mocked every straining effort of crumbling body and creaking machine to match that ageless, changeless facade. "Nikola, I can't ..."
The vampire silenced him with a kiss, swift and brutal, almost desperate in his turn. Nikola, with something dark and pained flashing in his eyes for the barest second, swooped in to press hard, savage lips to James', to press the blunt edges of human teeth into James' bottom lip and demand some other sound than the screaming of James' mortality. Nikola bit at him with human teeth to silence the creeping whispers of age, and something flashed in James, some hot, savage thought, an idea flaring against his senses to push back the crumbling.
"No," he snarled, pulling away, looking down into Nikola's wary, bewildered, human eyes. Looking down at the face of a friend, at a human who'd had no right to outstrip James, no right to outlast him. "No," he hissed, and reached up with one hand to push against Nikola's mouth. To press the pads of his fingers savagely against blunt teeth, to stare desperately into Nikola's wounded, bewildered expression. "Nikola, I need ... give me ..."
He snarled in frustration, unable to say it aloud, unable to bring himself to actually ask, and Nikola only stared at him in confusion, until ... Until realisation flickered across those bewildered features. Shock, a hard flush of fear, and something older. Deeper. Darker. Nikola stared at him in realisation and slowly, almost disbelievingly, let the darkness film across his eyes. Let his teeth lengthen and sharpen beneath James' fingers, and claws slide like lovers from his hands across James' shoulders. Let the vampire seep from beneath his skin, let the monster up into the light, and stared in stunned fear at the savage delight in James' own features.
"James ..." the vampire whispered, the word odd and resonating around his teeth, mouth wrapping around James' name in a way that long-lost, human friend at Oxford never could. "James," Nikola said, so softly, and his voice was ripe with fear.
"Please, Nikola," James answered. Leaning into him, pressing the invisible crumbling of his body into the hard, savage strength of a vampire, pressing mortal frailty into the embrace of something that had never been weak, that could never be weak. Curled his fingers through dark hair, and leaning close to taste the straining of the vampire's teeth beneath his skin, to press the soft skin of his for-now-youthful cheek to a hard, sharp point that would never blunt.
Nikola flinched, held still for a desperate, quivering second, then let out a savage, guttural snarl. Yanked his face away, buried it instead in the soft curve of James' neck, against the pulsing tubes that kept him alive, and wrapped his arms around James, lifted him exoskeleton and all from the floor. Seized hold of James with inhuman strength, organic claws spread alongside the metal ones embracing James' spine, and swung him through the air, tossing him with savage abandon onto the bed. The impact knocked the air from James, the metal and leather holding him together screaming at the abuse, and Nikola followed him before he could catch a breath, vaulted with animal grace to crouch above him on the bed, and rest a clawed hand on the ticking metal monster in James' chest.
"Be sure, James," the vampire snarled, rich and savage around his teeth. A monster James could pretend had never been human. A monster James could pretend had never been his friend, a monster he would have stood no chance against even had he been as fit and young as once they'd been together. Something even the strongest man was weak against, something James could never have fought, a monster to whom he could pretend all his creeping vulnerabilities mattered no more than did any other man's.
There was no strength against Nikola. There was no fighting the monster beneath his skin. And here, now, with that inhuman visage gazing down at him, James could pretend that the spidered lines of metal and rubber and glass that held him together made him no more weak than any other man. Made him no more ancient, no more decrepit, than anyone would look against the savage perfection of that monstrous form. Laid open beneath Nikola's clawed hand, James could pretend that the creeping decay against his senses was no more than any human would feel, held in a vampire's embrace.
"Please," he whispered, so softly. "Please," he begged, to the sorrow and the terror lurking behind the darkness in Nikola's inhuman stare, the confusion. Because Nikola didn't understand, would never understand, an immortal innocent, never knowing the creeping terror of decay. And James could not explain. Could not soften this blow, could not make this less of a using, less of a tearing of the human soul behind the monster's visage. Could only ask, in open desperation, for a mercy Nikola didn't understand he gave. "Please Nikola."
The vampire shuddered, once, sheer anguish as terror warred with desire, as pity savaged despair, and then he rolled forwards, a lean, deadly arc across James' quivering form, to press his lips against James' ear. To curl the sharpness of his teeth against James' cheek, and whisper, ragged and afraid: "I will fix this, James. I'll find some way. I promise."
And then, before James could answer, before he could cry out that, no, please, do not remind him now, do not promise that now, when James was so decayed, Nikola turned his full attention back on James' body. Turned his monstrous regard back on the human that dared challenge him, hard, savage hands tripping across tubes and metal and soft, quivering flesh in a slide of claws and brutal strength, mouth and bladed teeth marking lines across James' skin like needles, seeding fires in his veins, a spiralling drug that had no equal, savage mastery that had no force.
Nikola turned to him, peeled him open layer by layer, cloth and metal and flesh, wrung the weakness from his bones, the desperation from his heart, with brutal, savage care, and all the while looked at James with black, inhuman eyes that did not understand. That offered, with some dark and drowning emotion that bore some desperate resemblance to love, and did not, now or ever, understand.
And in the last moment before he was lost, before a vampire's strength and savage care swept him away in a rush of relief so brutal it was pain, James saw he had been right. Saw that he had known the truth. That Nikola had never been human. Could never have been. Because the vampire, this monster crying close against his skin, had never been anything but Nikola. Because the monster had never been anything but his friend, who James had used, and been allowed.
There existed no decay to touch inhuman beauty, no strength that was not weakness against inhuman force ... and no monstrous strength that could ever match the savagery of a human heart.
Silently, as he fell, as Nikola laid him gently down to sleep, James begged forgiveness. And knew, without seeing, that Nikola did not understand.
"James."
James didn't jump at the voice in the shadows. In part because it was next to impossible to jump, these days, in part because the owner of the voice had been due for some time, was in fact late, but mostly because he wouldn't give the man the satisfaction. Mostly because Nikola was a childish, arrogant man, and delighted in shocking people, and James was far, far too tired these days to play that game anymore.
He turned, hearing the hiss of his legs as he moved, feeling his chin tilt defiantly for no discernible reason as he faced the vampire moving slowly away from the window. He'd have to increase the security yet again, James noted idly. Not to keep Nikola out, as such. But because the vampire made a point of testing it each time he came, in his own way trying to help, and each time as he left, he'd leave some thought or other to improve it.
Just none that could successfully keep him out. But then, there were very, very few people in the world who could match Nikola's abilities in that regard, and James didn't yet begrudge him that.
"Nikola," he sighed, the air of it heavy as it left him. Everything was so heavy, these days. Everything so old and tired and heavy. Decaying, no matter what he did to stop it, his eyes catching every withering line, his mind still spinning dazzling stories within the crumbling shell of his body, and there existed nothing in this world, no drug, no chemical, that could keep the knowledge of that decay from his so-perfect, so-razored senses. He knew. He'd tried.
Nikola wasn't looking at him. Or rather, he was, but not to hear him speak. Not to reach out and greet a friend. Nikola, prowling closer with all a vampire's casual grace, was looking at the braces locked around James' legs, looking at the now so visible proof of James' decay, and the expression in the vampire's face was stunned and almost wild. The expression in his eyes as he looked up to catch James' was shocked, and ripe with fear.
"James," Nikola repeated, soft and quivering as he reached James' side, as he reached out towards the metal cages on James' limbs and jerked to a stop, hand hovering inches away. "James, what ...?"
James smiled. A rich dark bubble of humour, of black delight. Nikola, who so delighted in shocking people, so stunned now by James. So shocked in his turn. "You've been gone for most of a decade, Nikola," he reminded, clipped and perhaps a little bitter. "Things tend to change in that amount of time, for most of us."
Of course, Nikola had been gone for much longer than that, officially. Nikola had died over twenty years ago, and supposedly no-one had seen him since. Supposedly. But James had helped Nikola through his secret war, and James had quietly arranged for medicine to find its way to certain drop points, and for over a decade a vampire had crept into his Sanctuary every couple of years, snuck into James' rooms and brought a whisper of the past with him, and the sly glimmer of old friendships, and casually offered pointers for better security.
James wasn't naive, of course. He knew full well that Nikola was simply keeping his bread buttered, knew full well that whatever feelings of friendship Nikola had -and he did have them- would always be second to Nikola's needs of the moment, but still. For more than a decade, James had enjoyed the touch of something old and familiar and solid, snuck in little flashes to his door with an impish grin, and then ... nothing. For ten years. Nothing. He was, perhaps, a little bitter. He was, perhaps, a little tired of friends leaving him behind.
"James, what is this?" the vampire asked again, stooping to study the exoskeleton, as ever perfectly willing to sacrifice tact for knowledge, his clever, scientist's fingers running over the scaffolds of metal that kept James upright in this world these days, so long after he should have been horizontal, so long after he should have been another imprint in the earth. Nikola crouched beside him, all grace and curiosity and rich, stunned worry, and James found himself looking down at him with something close to pity. Found the bitterness fading, as hard to keep up as everything else these days, and his hand reaching out to rest on the vampire's shoulder.
"It has become ... necessary," he explained, very quietly. "The mechanism works admirably to keep my organs and soft tissues functioning, but I'm afraid my skeleton was never going to hold up to this age." He smiled, a flicker barely there, and ran one finger over Nikola's ever-smooth cheek, his ever-youthful features. Like Helen's. Like John's. Forever foreign to his own. "I have become decrepit in your absence, my friend," he whispered, very softly, with some slow deep thing in it that might have been humour, and might, just possibly, have been pain. "Far more slowly than most, but still ..."
Nikola looked up at him, a depth of pain shockingly deep for a moment, a chasm of loss that stunned James in his turn all over again, and then it was gone. Then it was wiped away, as if it had never been, and only a light, teasing grin in its place. Only that arrogant, self-assured little smile that marked Nikola's passage through the world.
"Oh, come now," the vampire said, standing once more, reaching out in his turn to touch James' cheek, to touch the still-youthful visage that disguised his decay from the world. For all James could feel his body slowly crumbling under the weight of years, for all he could measure every beat of the machine that fought against it, none of it showed, just yet, in his face. In his eyes, or his hands, as young looking as Nikola's own where they lay against the vampire's cheek. Though his bones creaked in weariness, shored up by metal and leather, James knew he still looked so very, very young.
"Not so decrepit," Nikola whispered, a laughing purr of seduction, an old, patterned rhythm to paper over the cracks in their facade. The same steps they'd paced in time since the 19th century, a little faded now from disuse, a little warmer and more tired. The same old dance, save that James now was lamed. Save that James, in this moment, suddenly couldn't bear it.
"I can't hide it anymore," James hissed back, fiercely, desperately. Reaching out to seize Nikola's arms, to seize hold of this elusive, immortal creature, to see the echoes of the past in every clear, smooth line of the vampire's face, and suddenly hating it. Suddenly hating the face of a friend that laughed at him out of the past, that mocked his every effort to keep up, mocked every straining effort of crumbling body and creaking machine to match that ageless, changeless facade. "Nikola, I can't ..."
The vampire silenced him with a kiss, swift and brutal, almost desperate in his turn. Nikola, with something dark and pained flashing in his eyes for the barest second, swooped in to press hard, savage lips to James', to press the blunt edges of human teeth into James' bottom lip and demand some other sound than the screaming of James' mortality. Nikola bit at him with human teeth to silence the creeping whispers of age, and something flashed in James, some hot, savage thought, an idea flaring against his senses to push back the crumbling.
"No," he snarled, pulling away, looking down into Nikola's wary, bewildered, human eyes. Looking down at the face of a friend, at a human who'd had no right to outstrip James, no right to outlast him. "No," he hissed, and reached up with one hand to push against Nikola's mouth. To press the pads of his fingers savagely against blunt teeth, to stare desperately into Nikola's wounded, bewildered expression. "Nikola, I need ... give me ..."
He snarled in frustration, unable to say it aloud, unable to bring himself to actually ask, and Nikola only stared at him in confusion, until ... Until realisation flickered across those bewildered features. Shock, a hard flush of fear, and something older. Deeper. Darker. Nikola stared at him in realisation and slowly, almost disbelievingly, let the darkness film across his eyes. Let his teeth lengthen and sharpen beneath James' fingers, and claws slide like lovers from his hands across James' shoulders. Let the vampire seep from beneath his skin, let the monster up into the light, and stared in stunned fear at the savage delight in James' own features.
"James ..." the vampire whispered, the word odd and resonating around his teeth, mouth wrapping around James' name in a way that long-lost, human friend at Oxford never could. "James," Nikola said, so softly, and his voice was ripe with fear.
"Please, Nikola," James answered. Leaning into him, pressing the invisible crumbling of his body into the hard, savage strength of a vampire, pressing mortal frailty into the embrace of something that had never been weak, that could never be weak. Curled his fingers through dark hair, and leaning close to taste the straining of the vampire's teeth beneath his skin, to press the soft skin of his for-now-youthful cheek to a hard, sharp point that would never blunt.
Nikola flinched, held still for a desperate, quivering second, then let out a savage, guttural snarl. Yanked his face away, buried it instead in the soft curve of James' neck, against the pulsing tubes that kept him alive, and wrapped his arms around James, lifted him exoskeleton and all from the floor. Seized hold of James with inhuman strength, organic claws spread alongside the metal ones embracing James' spine, and swung him through the air, tossing him with savage abandon onto the bed. The impact knocked the air from James, the metal and leather holding him together screaming at the abuse, and Nikola followed him before he could catch a breath, vaulted with animal grace to crouch above him on the bed, and rest a clawed hand on the ticking metal monster in James' chest.
"Be sure, James," the vampire snarled, rich and savage around his teeth. A monster James could pretend had never been human. A monster James could pretend had never been his friend, a monster he would have stood no chance against even had he been as fit and young as once they'd been together. Something even the strongest man was weak against, something James could never have fought, a monster to whom he could pretend all his creeping vulnerabilities mattered no more than did any other man's.
There was no strength against Nikola. There was no fighting the monster beneath his skin. And here, now, with that inhuman visage gazing down at him, James could pretend that the spidered lines of metal and rubber and glass that held him together made him no more weak than any other man. Made him no more ancient, no more decrepit, than anyone would look against the savage perfection of that monstrous form. Laid open beneath Nikola's clawed hand, James could pretend that the creeping decay against his senses was no more than any human would feel, held in a vampire's embrace.
"Please," he whispered, so softly. "Please," he begged, to the sorrow and the terror lurking behind the darkness in Nikola's inhuman stare, the confusion. Because Nikola didn't understand, would never understand, an immortal innocent, never knowing the creeping terror of decay. And James could not explain. Could not soften this blow, could not make this less of a using, less of a tearing of the human soul behind the monster's visage. Could only ask, in open desperation, for a mercy Nikola didn't understand he gave. "Please Nikola."
The vampire shuddered, once, sheer anguish as terror warred with desire, as pity savaged despair, and then he rolled forwards, a lean, deadly arc across James' quivering form, to press his lips against James' ear. To curl the sharpness of his teeth against James' cheek, and whisper, ragged and afraid: "I will fix this, James. I'll find some way. I promise."
And then, before James could answer, before he could cry out that, no, please, do not remind him now, do not promise that now, when James was so decayed, Nikola turned his full attention back on James' body. Turned his monstrous regard back on the human that dared challenge him, hard, savage hands tripping across tubes and metal and soft, quivering flesh in a slide of claws and brutal strength, mouth and bladed teeth marking lines across James' skin like needles, seeding fires in his veins, a spiralling drug that had no equal, savage mastery that had no force.
Nikola turned to him, peeled him open layer by layer, cloth and metal and flesh, wrung the weakness from his bones, the desperation from his heart, with brutal, savage care, and all the while looked at James with black, inhuman eyes that did not understand. That offered, with some dark and drowning emotion that bore some desperate resemblance to love, and did not, now or ever, understand.
And in the last moment before he was lost, before a vampire's strength and savage care swept him away in a rush of relief so brutal it was pain, James saw he had been right. Saw that he had known the truth. That Nikola had never been human. Could never have been. Because the vampire, this monster crying close against his skin, had never been anything but Nikola. Because the monster had never been anything but his friend, who James had used, and been allowed.
There existed no decay to touch inhuman beauty, no strength that was not weakness against inhuman force ... and no monstrous strength that could ever match the savagery of a human heart.
Silently, as he fell, as Nikola laid him gently down to sleep, James begged forgiveness. And knew, without seeing, that Nikola did not understand.
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