[Fic] One Goatherd and His One-Goat Herd 03
Title: One Goatherd and His One-Goat Herd 03
Fandom: X-Men: First Class
Characters/Pairing: Erik/Charles
Summary: Erik has one goat. His name is Charles. WIP
Notes: Princess Tutu Fusion. Sort of.
Once upon a time, there lived a man named Erik who bought a goat named Charles.
*
According to Erik, buying Charles was more of an accident than anything else. (How someone manages to buy a goat by accident is not something Erik has an explanation for, except that it’s the type of thing that only happens to him.
Charles, of course, knows better. (But no one ever thinks to ask.)
*
Erik is walking along his normal route home when he sees her.
She’s sitting on the gate to one of the roadside farms, perfectly poised, dressed richly in white furs and flowing fabrics. Her blonde hair gleams in even the weak winter sun.
She also has a goat with her.
Erik spins on his heel and immediately starts walking in the opposite direction. Mysterious women on deserted paths never did anyone any good, he knows. Sooner or later you were bound to offend them somehow and they'd turn you into an animal. With Erik’s luck, he’d end up being turned into something straight away. The worst thing she’d be able to think of.
Probably a beetle, he thinks darkly. A pink one.
Because the path he normally takes home to his hill is really the only path to his hill, Erik spends the next couple of hours wandering around the town aimlessly. He has no problem with the casual trespassing his alternative of cutting through the various fields in between would entail, but he does have a problem with the damage the resident goats would probably do to his person (and his clothing). So he stays until twilight, because running into the grabby hands of Stryker the Nightwatchman after dark is not something he’s willing to chance, and anyway, the woman should be gone by then.
She’s not.
He strolls past her with an air of forced nonchalance, pretending to be so focused on something in a distant field that he doesn’t see her, and hopes she leaves him alone.
“Erik,” she says. He freezes.
Shit.
He briefly considers just making a run for it.
“Well, you can try running,” she says casually. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Shitshitshitshit, Erik’s brain supplies helpfully.
He turns the situation over in his mind. She knows his name, she probably has some sort of power, which may allow her to tell what he’s thinking at least some of the time, she has business with him in particular and he’s kept her waiting for three hours. (She also has a goat. He doesn’t even know what to begin doing with that.)
He turns around slowly. Definitely a pink beetle now, he thinks glumly. A bright, bright pink. Please let him at least have horns, he pleads inwardly and oh look, he’s hysterical now.
She looks amused.
Erik reaches for the metal around them. Fairy tales (which have a strange tendency to turn out to be true-to-life tales in their little town) would put the odds in favour of his crushing defeat, but at least he’s going to go down fighting.
Apparently unaware of (but probably just unconcerned about, Erik thinks) his plans for imminent attack, the woman addresses him again.
“I suppose you’re wondering what business I have with you,” she says conversationally.
Erik nods tersely, wanting her to just get to the point, already. If he’s going to be turned into a beetle, he really would prefer that it be done quickly.
“It’s not anything as unpleasant as that,” she says, the corner of her mouth quirking up into a small half-smile. Given that she somehow just read his mind (again), Erik is not reassured.
She continues regardless. “My...employer heard a little something about you. The only man in Chesterton not to own any goats.” She tilts her head to the side. “You work with metal, I believe?”
“Yes,” Erik says. She hums her acknowledgment.
“Being in the business of...supply, he was wondering if he could interest you in some samples that might be more locally unavailable.”
She opens a small, flat case of lacquered wood to reveal a collection of rods of varying types of metal, set in a bed of red velvet lining.
Erik will be the first to admit that his mind is slightly (or, as the case may be, not-so-slightly) more suspicious than that of the average man, but he thinks he’s justified in thinking that even to the average man, this situation would smell like an entire fishmonger’s.
“No,” he says. The woman raises an eyebrow. “Thank you,” he adds belatedly. As he says it, though, he notices for the first time a strange metallic humming in the air.
“That’s a very hasty refusal,” she remarks. “Are you sure you don’t want to at least examine what I have to offer?”
“My work doesn’t require any types of metal I cannot already easily obtain,” Erik says firmly, trying to trace the source of the humming. He’s never felt a metal with this kind of resonance before. It seems to be coming from...the goat? No, he realises, not the goat, the fine chain around the goat’s neck, tying it to one of the fence posts. (Erik notes that the chain continues into a sort of muzzle over the goat’s head and face. Some sort of savage biter?, he wonders.)
“So I can’t interest you in anything?” the woman asks, snapping the case shut. “That’s a pity.”
Erik notes, however, that she doesn’t sound particularly disappointed. (Mostly, she just sounds, as she has throughout their entire conversation, politely bored.) She picks up the goat’s chain, preparing to leave.
“Wait,” he blurts out, unthinkingly. “What kind of metal is that chain made of?”
She turns and smiles, looking truly pleased for the first time. “Would you like to see it?” she asks, and puts the chain into his hand before he can answer.
Despite himself, Erik is curious. He runs the chain through his fingers, wondering about its particular properties and the various ways in which he could test them. (It’s not as if he has anything else to do with his spare time.)
He looks up at the woman.
She looks back at him appraisingly. “Ten silver pieces, and it’s yours.”
He has no idea if he’s getting a bargain or if he’s being robbed blind, but he counts the price into her palm. (It’s not as if he has anything else to do with his money.)
“Take good care of him,” she says.
“What?” Erik asks. “No, wait, I only wanted the - ” He’s cut off by a poof of displaced air and the appearance of a red-skinned man, who reaches out to take the blonde woman’s delicately proffered hand.
She smiles at Erik again. “His name is Charles.”
They disappear before Erik’s outstretched hand can grasp anything more substantial than a thin plume of red smoke, leaving Erik the apparent new owner of a goat the colour of tweed. He looks down at it, dumbfounded.
“Meeh,” says Charles.
*
For want of anything else to do with the goat, Erik takes it home. It seems biddable enough, trotting obediently alongside him all the way up the hill.
The first problem with this plan becomes apparent when they get to Erik’s house and Erik conveniently remembers that he doesn’t even have a shed to use as a night-time shelter. To highlight the implausibility of just leaving the goat in the garden for the night, the breeze that had been nippy for most of the evening chooses that moment to swell into a biting wind that almost mows Erik down sideways. He looks at the goat.
“If I let you spend the night in the house,” Erik asks it, “will you be able to manage not doing your business on the floor?”
It snorts. Strangely, Erik thinks, it manages to look mildly insulted.
“Nothing else for it,” he sighs, opening the door, already resigning himself to the inevitability of goat turds. “I’ll have to go down to the town to get some help in building something tomorrow, before it snows. Tonight, I suppose you’d better come in.”
He leads the goat in and closes the door while it stands in the middle of the floor, looking around curiously. Erik loops the chain-leash through the section acting as a collar so it doesn’t tangle around the goat’s legs and trip it, before going to see what he can rummage up for dinner. For the both of them, and isn’t that a strange thought for someone who’s been eating dinner alone in this cottage for as long as he can remember. (He’s not exaggerating; he actually doesn’t remember anything before his solitary life on this hill in Chesterton. Erik has some huge gaps in his memory, which would worry him if he ever got the chance to really think about them. But every time the thought comes up, it almost immediately feels unimportant, somehow.)
He looks across at the goat, which is looking back at him speculatively with disconcertingly blue eyes. It breaks eye contact first, apparently unable to resist the chance to nose around the room, examining Erik’s (admittedly sparse) collection of belongings.
Erik turns back to dishing up two plates of dinner. He’s not sure how well goats do with cooked food, but he’s also too lazy to make anything else up for it, so the leftovers from last night’s vegetable stew will have to do for the both of them.
“Dinnertime,” he calls to the goat. He’s not sure what kind of training it’s had, but it seems to understand him, or at least the smell of food, because it comes trotting over.
At which point, Erik realises that the chain twisted around its head and face may make eating slightly difficult.
“I hope,” he says to it, taking its face in his hands, “you don’t turn out to be feral.”
The goat definitely looks offended this time.
Deciding to live on the edge, Erik chances sliding the chain muzzle off its face and is profoundly grateful to retain all his fingers.
After their meal (which the goat eats neatly and delicately, Erik is surprised to note) he sits down by his fire to examine his intended purchase. He turns it over in his fingers, examining its heft and colour before moving on to more non-traditional methods. He fuses the links together into a rod to test its hardness, pulls the metal thin to gauge its tensile strength - and realises mid-tug that he has an audience.
The goat is watching him work, transfixed. Erik’s not sure what he should do about this.
“I...have an affinity with metal,” he tells it awkwardly. It continues to watch him, looking delighted. Erik’s not sure if it’s the adoring eyes or the discomfiting gaze of a silent audience that makes him do it, but he starts - haltingly at first, gaining ease as he continues - to explain what he’s doing.
At some point in the evening, the goat moves closer and rests its head on his knee.
Erik’s not used to companionship.
It’s nice.
*
He wakes in a cold sweat, a scream strangled in his throat and limbs shaking from the fear of a face too shadowed to see, from the terror of a nightmare he can’t remember. There’s a soft nudge to his arm and he starts violently. A pause, and then the touch resumes, more tentatively, as a gentle nuzzling to his neck and face.
Erik reaches out in the darkness and gratefully buries his fingers in thick, soft wool. He takes a few deep breaths, anchored by the comforting nearness of the warm body beside his bed. His heart rate gradually slows, lulled by soft touches and steady breathing.
“Goodnight, Charles,” he whispers.
*
Erik wakes again late the next morning, half-expecting to find a pungent offering somewhere on his floor. Instead, he finds Charles, having nudged him awake, waiting patiently at the door to be let out.
“Huh,” Erik says.
He also finds, as he opens the door, that it has snowed during the night, and everything is covered in a layer of white. Meaning it will be impossible getting any help up the hill and to his house in the first place, let alone getting any sort of decent shelter built. He supposes the Charles will just have to stay inside with Erik for the winter. Erik finds he’s all right with that.
“Well,” he says, when Charles has come back inside. “What shall we do about breakfast?”
*
Erik doesn’t think anyone has ever before had reason to wonder how much difference one goat can make to a routine, but apparently the answer is “a lot”. As it is, he passes an unprecedentedly pleasant winter with Charles keeping him company.
His routine doesn’t actually change; he still spends time every couple of days clearing the snow from the sections of path nearest his front door and partway down the hill before they’re snowed over again. He still makes small improvements in and around the house. He still tends to what remains of his small vegetable garden.
But now there’s Charles to help him cart excess snow around (“Oi!” Erik splutters indignantly, pulling himself out of the snowdrift Charles playfully headbutts him into, and flinging handfuls of snow that Charles evades easily with gleeful prancing) and to keep him company on the slow, cold trudge back into the house.
Charles follows him on his home repair rounds and hands him tools (which is, Erik admits, taking a small metal chisel from Charles’ mouth, not really necessary, but appreciated nonetheless) and noses around the garden while Erik tends to it, every now and then nibbling experimentally on various weeds (and isn’t it just typical that the bane of Erik’s gardening life is the only thing to flourish in the snow).
And when the work is done, Erik takes Charles on walks around the hill and shows him all his favourite places.
(“I yodelled, mostly,” Erik says to Charles, as they sit on a small west-facing outcrop on the side of the hill. “I wanted to see how far I could make myself heard. I thought I heard a reply once, too, but it never happened again, so.”
Charles turns to look at Erik with great interest at that, but then, Erik thinks, Charles always seems to be greatly interested in Erik.
(Erik’s sure he’s just imagining it, but he keeps getting the disconcerting feeling that he’s being watched whenever he’s getting changed or even just bending over. And more than once when he looks around, he’s caught Charles watching him avidly like a pervy old...goat. But he’s sure that must be a coincidence. Mostly sure, anyway.)
“No, I’m not going to show you now,” Erik tells him. “The last time I yodelled in winter, well.” Erik pauses, feeling his face heat up slightly with embarrassment. He clears his throat. “There may have been a mini-avalanche involved.”
Charles whuffs his amusement.
“And anyway,” Erik continues, placing a hand on Charles’ neck. “I don’t really need to make contact with people in the next town over when I have you to talk to, do I?”
He doesn’t think he imagines Charles shifting that tiny bit closer.)
They have their meals together at Erik’s little table (because once Erik gets into the habit of feeding Charles whatever he himself is having, meat products aside, he never really gets out of it) and Erik sets up a small dish of water in a corner for Charles to drink from throughout the day. At night, Charles sleeps on a pile of old blankets in the same corner, until Erik has another nightmare and wakes up to find Charles curled up on the floor beside him, having crossed the room to comfort him during the night. After that, Charles sleeps beside Erik’s bed. And, strangely, the nightmares stop.
In the evenings, Erik sits by the fire with Charles curled up next to him. Sometimes he reads, mostly treatises on various topics; aloud to Charles if the subject matter is sufficiently interesting, and just the choicest bits in a pompous voice where the authors are particularly pretentious or just ridiculously wrong. (And if he sees Charles sometimes looking a little wistful while gazing at his bookshelf, well, Erik must be imagining things again.) Sometimes he plays with the metal bits and bobs he has lying around, moulding them into various shapes for Charles’ entertainment. (When he reaches for metal these days, he hears a distant voice, as if from an old memory or a half-forgotten dream, saying, Not pain and anger, my friend. True focus lies in the place between rage and serenity.) And other times, he just sits and talks to Charles, about anything and everything that comes to mind. Charles, as it turns out, is an excellent listener.
Erik’s still not sold on the idea of large herds (by which he really means herds larger than just Charles), but that winter, the number of goat-lovers in Chesterton increases by one.
*
When the snow thaws enough so that it’s possible to get to the town without having to burrow through it, they go on a supply run. Erik puts together a makeshift rig from an old crate and some hastily-sawn circles of wood, and harnesses it to Charles’ back. Charles takes a few experimental steps around their front garden and it follows smoothly behind him. Satisfied, Charles returns to Erik’s side and nudges his hand in approval.
“What an adorable carthorse you make, Charles,” Erik comments, and laughs at the unimpressed side-eye Charles gives him in response. Charles is nevertheless happy enough to pull it along and trots cheerfully beside Erik all the way down the hill. (He seems, Erik is amused to note, to take it as a personal affront whenever the little cart gets stuck in the snow, turning indignantly to glare at it each time.)
When they finish stocking up on food, new books and other essentials, they lug their spoils to the local tea shop, where, to Erik’s great surprise, Charles immediately makes a bee-line for one of the waitresses, a girl with blue skin and red hair.
Watching Charles greet her like an old friend, nuzzling at any part of her he can reach in clear delight, Erik isn’t sure what to think. He’s pretty certain he’s feeling a little jealous, though.
“Aren’t you a sweetie,” she coos, crouching down to pet Charles. She looks up at Erik and smiles. “It’s probably because I smell like pastries, I’ve been in and out of the kitchens all day,” she says reassuringly. Erik can only imagine what his face looks like, that a stranger feels she needs to comfort him over the discovery that he’s not the sole person in the affections of his goat. (It does seem a little unfair though, when Charles is the only person Erik likes.) “What’s his name?”
“Charles,” Erik says.
“Huh.” The waitress now looks a little surprised herself. “My brother’s name is Charles. Well,” she says, recovering and taking Charles’ face in her hands, “it just happens that his favourite pie’s on the menu today. Maybe you’ll like it too, hm?”
Charles noses gently at her hand and she giggles. She looks back up at Erik. “Why don’t you take a seat? I’ll be right out with some tea and pie for you - today’s special.”
Charles loves the pie.
*
The waitress’ name is Raven. She grew up in a big house in the middle of nowhere, west of Chesterton, she tells Erik on one of her breaks, while Charles chases the last of the pie crumbs across the plate, but came down to...she’s forgotten now, isn’t that funny? But anyway, she stayed.
She spoils Charles shamelessly, constantly stopping to scratch at his neck or fuss with his ears. He reminds her of someone, she explains. She can’t quite remember who, but Erik thinks, seeing the way her eyes go soft when she looks at Charles, it must be someone she’s very, very fond of. (That, or she’s just very, very fond of goats. Frankly, in their town, both are equally likely.)
*
The next time they stop by the tea shop, Erik fixes one of the tables, fusing a metal leg back together after it breaks. Raven looks at him speculatively.
“You know,” she says thoughtfully. “Hank would be very interested in what you can do with that. I’ll have to introduce you next time.”
*
“We’re conducting some experiments to see if Sean’s screams will enable him to fly,” Hank says to him earnestly a couple of times after that, gesturing towards the grinning redhead beside him with the bundle of what looks to Erik like cloth and sticks under his arm. “Would you like to come along?”
*
When, a couple of weeks later, a stunned Erik tells Charles he thinks he’s somehow made some friends, Charles doesn’t look surprised at all.