[MASS] Micheal and the Tattoo
Roberto appears in the doorway of the library, disapproval and distaste written clear across his features. “Thane’s coming up the driveway.”
I look at him over my glasses, study the way he stands and talks. Another Kindred would have a ghoul beaten, brainwashed, or killed if it talked the way Roberto does. Fortunately, I’m not another Kindred and Roberto knows it. I suspect his distaste for Thane is centered in that very fact.
I’m tempted to talk to him, interview him on why he stays with me or whether he regrets it. To offer him the embrace and see if he once again turns me down. It’s a conversation we have every five or ten years and every time the answer is the same. “They come and go. I will always be yours.”
However, Thane is, as Roberto has said, coming up the driveway and therefore it will have to wait.
I get to the front door before Thane has managed to knock. I open it to find him with his fist raised. He is a man who is rarely surprised and when he sees me, his lips form a firm line, face betraying nothing while his eyes hold myriad emotions, all of them difficult.
“Yes,” is the only word he says, dropping his raised hand to his side and meeting my gaze forthrightly.
For a long moment, I study him. A man of middle height and weight, haunted by a past he cannot change and fearing a future without emotion. He has the sinewy strength of a swordsman and manners that he apes because the Invictus tell him he must. His slacks are pressed, his shirt is crisp, but only, I think, because a servant ensures that he isn’t able to pull on last night’s clothes, whisked away during the day to be cleaned or burned.
I do not ask him if he knows what he is agreeing to or if he is sure. I told him of my art and how I apply it. I told him that I mark my childer this way. I didn’t say that when I do so, they are ever mine, bound to me by more than blood.
I didn’t have to.
-=-=-=-=-
I invite Micheal into the house by simply opening the door wider. He steps in and looks around him. The last time he saw the foyer, he was hurting too much and too deeply to take it in. Tonight, his gaze lingers on the shrunken head on the foyer console and the vibrant painting by a Brazilian artist whose name is lost to time hanging above it.
But we’re not here to discuss my decorating, so I lead him through the house once more. I stop in the library and here his eyes widen while I pick up the sketches, and then without another word I gently guide him by the elbow to a room I rarely use.
The lock sticks a little as I open the door and if I thought that Micheal was surprised by the library, then it is nothing compared to this small room where decades of drawings and sketches line the walls and a rough wooden table stained dark with blood dominates the room.
Micheal goes to the wall while I prepare my tools. He pauses by a row of botanicals I drew when I lived in Sao Paulo. Under those are a row of nudes that replicate the shapes of the exotic flora.
I open jars, inspect the needles, and cut my left hand open to mix pigment powder with my own blood. He turns as the smell of blood reaches his nose, raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t do things by halves,” I say by way of explanation. “You may disrobe at your leisure.”
He looks like he bites his tongue on a response and does as I request until he is standing before me, nude in his wounded splendor.
“Table. Face down.” I point and he complies. The table is old and splintery, cannot be and is not comfortable in the slightest. Micheal doesn’t say a word of protest.
It’s an hour before I’m satisfied with my proposed placement of the tattoo, all the while I poke and prod his back, run my fingers over his scars, make notes on my sketches. Micheal lays motionless, letting me use him as my canvas. An artist himself, I imagine that he understands the need for perfection.
“Are you certain?” I ask him, poising a needle over his back. It’s the only time I’ll do so and he cranes his head around to see me. Meeting my eyes, he nods solemnly. “Yes.”
And so it begins.
My technique is an old one, painstaking and precise. A needle poked into skin, over and over. It is painful and the process is long, but soon enough there is a line, a long one, the shape of an olive tree’s trunk. A second line, parallel to the first, irregular and skirting another scar.
Micheal is silent, motionless. I continue.
Roots extend from the base of the trunk, disappear into his skin, great gnarled things, carefully shaded.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Suddenly, I look up. Hours have passed and the base of the design has been etched into his skin. I pull the phone from my jeans pocket and see that dawn is almost upon us. I curse and that rouses Micheal from his reverie. “Madeleine?” he asks.
“It’s nearly dawn. You’ll never make it home in time.”
He levers himself up from the table, wincing. “I can stay.”
If I had breath to hold, I would. Instead I close my eyes. Too close, too close.
“I’ll show you a room,” I say. Too close. Too close.
The room I show him is as far away from the bed that Etienne and I share as possible.
-=-=-=-
The next night we start again. Micheal has healed himself and the tattoo now looks as if it has always been a part of his skin. Kindred skin doesn’t age, doesn’t weather. Cool and dry against my fingers, It is a more satisfying canvas than the human body ever is.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Tonight it goes faster. Branches and leaves, individually picked out in ink and blood. I wonder if he knows how much of myself I give to him in this act. Too much.
Hundreds of leaves, a tree full across his scarred shoulder, branches that wind around and through those lines.
Dawn comes too soon.
“I can stay,” he says again, stretching and, I think, reveling in the clean pain of the new mark.
I lead him once more to his room and we linger on the threshold. He turns so I may see his back which he heals without once seeing the newest addition. He casts a glance over his shoulder and I catch the barest hint of blue to his eyes, but when he closes the door behind him, there are back to their usual brown.
Perhaps I imagined it.
Perhaps I give too much.
Too much.
-=-=-=-
One more evening. The sword and the flowering vine.
The sword is difficult and the pauses between lines are long. Micheal shifts once and I rap him smartly on the shoulder while I ponder the best approach. He says nothing, settles himself and lets me work.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I round the table, approach the sword from a different angle, round it again and start once more.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A vine buries the sword and it’s with satisfaction that I prick tiny flowers into his warrior’s skin.
I stand back, view my work, the healed parts and the new, raw sword hilt and flowers.
An olive tree that reaches up across the right side of his back, branches laden with leaves. The sword laid across the roots, the vine that buries its blade. The symbolism is thick and yet, the design is beautiful and simple and I am entirely pleased with what I have wrought.
“I am done.”
He heals it before he rises, trusting me entirely. I wonder how I have warranted such a trust and in his brown eyes I see the answer.
He loves me.
And I know that with this act, I have proven that it is not unjustified and it is not, entirely, unrequited.
Too much. Too much.
-----------------------------
A/N: Jeff does a beautiful response from Micheal's side, here. And Nate, who plays Etienne, responds to the entire mess in Greed
I look at him over my glasses, study the way he stands and talks. Another Kindred would have a ghoul beaten, brainwashed, or killed if it talked the way Roberto does. Fortunately, I’m not another Kindred and Roberto knows it. I suspect his distaste for Thane is centered in that very fact.
I’m tempted to talk to him, interview him on why he stays with me or whether he regrets it. To offer him the embrace and see if he once again turns me down. It’s a conversation we have every five or ten years and every time the answer is the same. “They come and go. I will always be yours.”
However, Thane is, as Roberto has said, coming up the driveway and therefore it will have to wait.
I get to the front door before Thane has managed to knock. I open it to find him with his fist raised. He is a man who is rarely surprised and when he sees me, his lips form a firm line, face betraying nothing while his eyes hold myriad emotions, all of them difficult.
“Yes,” is the only word he says, dropping his raised hand to his side and meeting my gaze forthrightly.
For a long moment, I study him. A man of middle height and weight, haunted by a past he cannot change and fearing a future without emotion. He has the sinewy strength of a swordsman and manners that he apes because the Invictus tell him he must. His slacks are pressed, his shirt is crisp, but only, I think, because a servant ensures that he isn’t able to pull on last night’s clothes, whisked away during the day to be cleaned or burned.
I do not ask him if he knows what he is agreeing to or if he is sure. I told him of my art and how I apply it. I told him that I mark my childer this way. I didn’t say that when I do so, they are ever mine, bound to me by more than blood.
I didn’t have to.
-=-=-=-=-
I invite Micheal into the house by simply opening the door wider. He steps in and looks around him. The last time he saw the foyer, he was hurting too much and too deeply to take it in. Tonight, his gaze lingers on the shrunken head on the foyer console and the vibrant painting by a Brazilian artist whose name is lost to time hanging above it.
But we’re not here to discuss my decorating, so I lead him through the house once more. I stop in the library and here his eyes widen while I pick up the sketches, and then without another word I gently guide him by the elbow to a room I rarely use.
The lock sticks a little as I open the door and if I thought that Micheal was surprised by the library, then it is nothing compared to this small room where decades of drawings and sketches line the walls and a rough wooden table stained dark with blood dominates the room.
Micheal goes to the wall while I prepare my tools. He pauses by a row of botanicals I drew when I lived in Sao Paulo. Under those are a row of nudes that replicate the shapes of the exotic flora.
I open jars, inspect the needles, and cut my left hand open to mix pigment powder with my own blood. He turns as the smell of blood reaches his nose, raises an eyebrow.
“I don’t do things by halves,” I say by way of explanation. “You may disrobe at your leisure.”
He looks like he bites his tongue on a response and does as I request until he is standing before me, nude in his wounded splendor.
“Table. Face down.” I point and he complies. The table is old and splintery, cannot be and is not comfortable in the slightest. Micheal doesn’t say a word of protest.
It’s an hour before I’m satisfied with my proposed placement of the tattoo, all the while I poke and prod his back, run my fingers over his scars, make notes on my sketches. Micheal lays motionless, letting me use him as my canvas. An artist himself, I imagine that he understands the need for perfection.
“Are you certain?” I ask him, poising a needle over his back. It’s the only time I’ll do so and he cranes his head around to see me. Meeting my eyes, he nods solemnly. “Yes.”
And so it begins.
My technique is an old one, painstaking and precise. A needle poked into skin, over and over. It is painful and the process is long, but soon enough there is a line, a long one, the shape of an olive tree’s trunk. A second line, parallel to the first, irregular and skirting another scar.
Micheal is silent, motionless. I continue.
Roots extend from the base of the trunk, disappear into his skin, great gnarled things, carefully shaded.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Suddenly, I look up. Hours have passed and the base of the design has been etched into his skin. I pull the phone from my jeans pocket and see that dawn is almost upon us. I curse and that rouses Micheal from his reverie. “Madeleine?” he asks.
“It’s nearly dawn. You’ll never make it home in time.”
He levers himself up from the table, wincing. “I can stay.”
If I had breath to hold, I would. Instead I close my eyes. Too close, too close.
“I’ll show you a room,” I say. Too close. Too close.
The room I show him is as far away from the bed that Etienne and I share as possible.
-=-=-=-
The next night we start again. Micheal has healed himself and the tattoo now looks as if it has always been a part of his skin. Kindred skin doesn’t age, doesn’t weather. Cool and dry against my fingers, It is a more satisfying canvas than the human body ever is.
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
Tonight it goes faster. Branches and leaves, individually picked out in ink and blood. I wonder if he knows how much of myself I give to him in this act. Too much.
Hundreds of leaves, a tree full across his scarred shoulder, branches that wind around and through those lines.
Dawn comes too soon.
“I can stay,” he says again, stretching and, I think, reveling in the clean pain of the new mark.
I lead him once more to his room and we linger on the threshold. He turns so I may see his back which he heals without once seeing the newest addition. He casts a glance over his shoulder and I catch the barest hint of blue to his eyes, but when he closes the door behind him, there are back to their usual brown.
Perhaps I imagined it.
Perhaps I give too much.
Too much.
-=-=-=-
One more evening. The sword and the flowering vine.
The sword is difficult and the pauses between lines are long. Micheal shifts once and I rap him smartly on the shoulder while I ponder the best approach. He says nothing, settles himself and lets me work.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I round the table, approach the sword from a different angle, round it again and start once more.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A vine buries the sword and it’s with satisfaction that I prick tiny flowers into his warrior’s skin.
I stand back, view my work, the healed parts and the new, raw sword hilt and flowers.
An olive tree that reaches up across the right side of his back, branches laden with leaves. The sword laid across the roots, the vine that buries its blade. The symbolism is thick and yet, the design is beautiful and simple and I am entirely pleased with what I have wrought.
“I am done.”
He heals it before he rises, trusting me entirely. I wonder how I have warranted such a trust and in his brown eyes I see the answer.
He loves me.
And I know that with this act, I have proven that it is not unjustified and it is not, entirely, unrequited.
Too much. Too much.
-----------------------------
A/N: Jeff does a beautiful response from Micheal's side, here. And Nate, who plays Etienne, responds to the entire mess in Greed