lately i've been trying my best, but maybe it ain't good enough
DEVIL'S WORK
[hank/alex xm:fc ; a ficmix]
Twelve songs and twelve snippets pertaining to Messrs Hank McCoy and Alex Summers. Basically I just listened to a single song until I cranked out a drabble. Youtube link to the MV if available are viewable through the song title. Download links of the songs at the bottom.
SPECTOR | grey shirt & tie (the big pink remix)
"I don't think this is a good idea," Alex whines, tugging on vest and buttoning up while trying to stuff his feet in the leather loafers on loan from Charles.
"It'll be over in a few hours," Hank placates with a light hum, adjusting his tie in the mirror. His eyes flicker over his shoulder, at Alex crossing his arms as he stares at his own feet.
"Not a good fit?" Hank asks.
"Nah, it's fine, just--" Alex stops, looking up at Hank who finally turned around, fully dressed.
He still looked geeky-- gray plaid, his regular clunky glasses, but something was different.
Shoulders back. Head tilted upwards. Easy, relaxed smile aimed right at him. Alex shivered, feeling goosebumps slither down his back.
"Ready?"
"Sure, why not," Alex mumbled, tripping over himself as he gets up. Hank laughs softly and heads out of the room, with Alex cursing at himself, the blush reaching his ears.
GLASSER | home
He smells dry. Like wood and anise stars and dying embers in a fireplace. He tastes sharp-- like lime and sea salt and shiso leaves and autumn-- not that Hank ever tasted Alex before, but that's what he imagines it would be like.
Sometimes, when the smirks and the glares and the insults get to be too much, Hank closes his eyes and starts a low hum in the pit of his stomach that to anyone else would be growling. Because unfortunately, Alex smells the best to him.
D'ANCONIA | elodie
"C'mon Alex!" Raven shouts at him from across the room, waving her beer bottle in the air. "Even Hank's dancing!"
Alex grins, watching Sean, Darwin, Angel, and Hank all on their feet and jamming to whatever they manage to find lying around the mansion. None of them are really "dancing", save for Angel, though her writhing looks comparable to the spastic jumping and jerking Sean is doing. Darwin is gyrating at an alarming rate, and Hank--
whatever he's doing shouldn't even be called dancing. His arms are bent and close to his chest and he's spinning around, occasionally bumping into someone. But it's impossible to miss the serene, sweet smile playing across his lips as he whirls around with his eyes closed, shaking his head from side to side.
And Alex can't say no to that.
MIIKE SNOW | devil's work
"Dammit, fucking open up Hank! HANK!"
Hank scribbled another loop on the margins of his notes, ignoring the pounding on his door and the smoky smell indicating that Alex had already unsuccessfully tried to cut his way into the laboratory.
"I know you're in there, Hank!"
Hank grits his teeth, just because his lab was right next to the bunker didn't mean that Alex need to or even should find every possible moment to barge in.
He presses the button that allows the heavy titanium doors to slide open, finding a seething Alex waiting for him.
Just in time to get clocked in the face.
Hank staggers back into the lab, gingerly feeling his cheek. He moves his jaw from side to side and swipes his tongue against his teeth to check for bleeding and loose teeth.
He then steps forward, hunches down, and charges, using his shoulder to ram Alex into the opposite wall. Alex's body makes a loud crack into the concrete behind him and slides down, his head lolling onto his shoulder.
"Sheee-it," he hissed out, and abandoning his anger, Hank quickly kneels down, inspecting the damage.
"Are you alright? Does it hurt--"
WHAM! Hank skids a few feet away, clutching his chest where Alex had kicked him. He's collecting his breath when Alex pounces on him, letting his punches fly.
After this, it dissolves into nothing more than senseless blows. Hank gets smacked more than anything, though he's pretty sure he got bitten once or twice. Eventually, he manages to grab both of Alex's swinging wrists.
"What," Hank gasped out, "do you want?"
A goofy grin spread over Alex's stupid, stupid face and Hank just wants to drive his knee into his stomach to make him stop.
"I forgot."
ALEX WINSTON | velvet elvis
"I mean, can you imagine? That bacteria outnumbers us a trillion to one? That we're basically walking bacteria hosts?"
"Sure," Alex plays along, clicking the kitchen table with his fingertips, propping his head up with his other arm.
"That we wouldn't even be here without these things, that we evolved with them in the most--"
"What's your favorite color?" Alex snaps.
"...excuse me?"
"I know about the migratory patterns of Canadian geese. I know about three hundred years of Peruvian history. I know about genetics and adenine and I know more about existentialism than I care to know. I'm starting to understand my own powers. I don't know a goddamn thing about you, Hank McCoy."
Hank snaps his mouth shut. Blinks. Alex stares back. "Well?"
"I like red," he admits, after a while.
"Correct," Alex says, ignoring Hank's confused face, "now what about favorite pizza topping?"
NO CEREMONY| hurtlove (dawn golden and rosy cross remix)
*epilepsy warning
You want him. Bad. So, so, so bad.
But it isn't a want that starts and ends with your libido; it's a want that is deep and dark and driven solely by your id. It's the way that you looks over at him sitting sideways on the armchair, legs slung over on the arm rests and his eyes closed, and all you want to do is go over and sniff his hair. It's a sick, beautiful want that entertains ideas of you pulling his eyelids open to see his warm, honey eyes and touch them, pressing down hard. It's a want that wishes you'd just kiss him only to feel on your tongue the ridges of his teeth, from his molars to his incisors and back again. It's a want that wants to peel back the skin on his chest so you can marvel at his wide sternum and drag your fingers along his ribcage, watching his lungs shudder and his heart pulse. It's a want that makes you want, more than anything, to live in him.
And all of sudden, he wakes up to you staring from across the room. You pull back as if shocked, but all he does is scrunch up his nose and fumble for his glasses.
"Alex, what are you doing?"
THE SNOWDROPPERS | do the stomp (spank rock remix)
Sean's not stupid.
He supposes it's pretty easy to not notice him, and by extension, to think that he's too "out there" to understand what's going on. But with the way that Alex and Hank dance around each other and then snipping at him to stop laughing when they stammer or avert their eyes away from each other is getting to be too much.
Like how Alex is practically lying on top of Hank while they're watching a movie, stroking one big blue arm like it was a cat, with Hank making happy, rumbling sounds in the back of his throat. Every now and again, Alex will loudly declare something (real or otherwise) about Hank that irks him, all without ever getting up from the little cocoon he's made for himself with Hank's fluffy arm draped around him and a gigantic wooly afghan on his lap that doesn't get distributed evenly between him and Hank.
Sean would feel sorry for Hank, except the big lug seems so happy being a furnace and personal popcorn feeder for Alex, that he just throws a cushion at both of their heads, just to make them stop cooing over each other for a minute.
ACTIVE CHILD | playing house (chad valley remix)
"Pass the salt?"
Hank's eyes flickers up. It's easily in Alex's reach, but Hank picks it up and drops the delicate glass into Alex's waiting hand. He resumes eating, nothing left to say.
Charles still hasn't come back from the hospital.
None of them can claim any mastery in the kitchen. Even the normally buoyant Sean is despondently shifting the pasta around his plate.
It's too quiet.
Beast shifts in his seat. There's still half of his dinner left on his plate, but he gets up and rumbles, "I'm not hungry," before scraping the rest in the trash and washing his plate. The other two don't give so much as a hum in recognition. Hank looks at the both of them, before leaving the kitchen as quietly as possible.
--
"Sorry," Alex breathes into his fur, delirious, sometime past midnight. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry. So sorry."
And Hank has nothing left to say.
UNIFORMS | 1020 trickery lane
Alex teasing Hank is nothing new-- after months and months of being called uncreative nicknames, Hank learned not to take them to heart and in a way, realized it was some stupid, roundabout way for Alex to maintain some feeble form of masculinity, to be some sort of alpha male of the group. Hank understands-- he's been to Botswana during his stint at Harvard as a study abroad program to study gorillas. He already publish several papers on primate aggression and hiearchy; Alex's behavior follows his theories to a T.
Until the younger teen starts winking at him. Grinning at him like there's no tomorrow, leaning closer and invading his personal space, and adopting a coy tone of voice while talking to Hank, no matter if there people present or not.
It's disconcerting, since this never happened with the gorillas and the even more terrifying implication that his research was wrong.
So when Alex plonks right in front him one morning at the breakfast with a big wink and a "morning, beautiful," Hank sets his coffee right down and locks eyes with Alex before grinning widely, winking right back, "thanks, gorgeous."
He turns around to leave, not even caring what Alex's reaction would be, feeling utterly mortified (though he can hear Sean's howling laughter even from his lab across the mansion). It certainly shifted the balance somewhat, when Alex wouldn't look at him in the eye for a few days.
BANG GANG | forever now
Hank wakes up feeling a hand running through his hair.
It's late afternoon, with only hazy light slivers and dust particles floating visible without his glasses on. Still, he doesn't move, content to feel the fingers drag through and press on his scalp. He finds Alex's other hand lying on his chest, and he reaches up to squeeze it, which gets him a squeeze back.
"Awake yet?"
"I don't want to be," Hank admits, a wide yawn threatening to be unleashed.
"There's still an hour until dinner."
Hank grunts, and turns his head into the juncture between Alex's neck and shoulder. The man squirms as Hank also curls an arm around his waist, and they resettle with Hank lying mostly on top of Alex.
"Then I'll ask you to keep quiet for an hour," Hank sighs in Alex's ear, pushing down with his hips slightly. "Would you do that for me?"
"Yes," Alex croaked out in the end, bringing his arms around Hank's neck to let their lips touch. "Yes."
OUTASIGHT | figure eight (discotech remix)
The first day of May opened up to brilliant, blue skies and Alex dragged out a picnic basket from the pantry and stuffed with a bright red checkered cloth along with anything that looked vaugely edible in the house without needing for it to cook. After hassling Hank out of his lab, promising it'll "only take five minutes", they're now on a wide, rolling hill overlooking the mansion on the left and a small pond with a cluster of trees on the right. Hank obediently nibbles at the swiss and salami on rye sandwich Alex had slapped together an hour ago, not even breathing a word about the lack of condiments or vegetables. Alex is too busy watching Hank's tongue flick out to lick at his lips to pay too much attention to his own poorly made lunch. After Hank's downed half the lemonade to compensate for the dryness, Alex pulls the thermos away, setting it down before he pushes Hank down the hill. He quickly takes a swig of lemonade, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then starts running.
--
They trudge back to the house as the sun is starting to go down, with grass stains everywhere and dirt rubbed into their faces.
"Let's do this again tomorrow." Alex demands more than suggests, swinging the picnic basket violently around, and Hank leans down to brush a stray grass blade out of his hair.
"I've got work to do," Hank says into Alex's hair, and Alex whacks him in the knees with the basket.
(They go anyways for the next two weeks.)
Bonus （won't be on in the zip):
NELL | comeback
(warning: may not be suitable for those prone to epilepsy.)
He knows just about everything about Alex. Physically, that is. He needs to in order to design the most efficient and functional plate for the mutant to use. He still doesn't have a single clue what goes on up in Alex's head and he thinks that even if he did have telepathy, it'd still be confusing.
But everything just flies out the window once he watches Alex use his powers. The whole bunker is lit up with flames and light and red, red, red. By the end of it, half of the room is burning, and Alex is in the middle of it all, panting and gasping, eyes watering and coughing and Hank rushes in with a fire extinguisher. The gears in his head start to click and whir back to life as he methodically sweep back and forth to smother the flames, trying to figure out all the modifications and tweaks--
"I fucked up again, huh."
And there it is-- even worse than angry Alex or hungover Alex or whiny Alex-- there's this one. The one that has his shoulders slumped and staring at his hands with a scowl and a betrayed look on his face.
So Hank says the only thing he can think that would be appropriate.
"Shut the fuck up."
Alex's head shoots up, and Hank keeps a straight face, spraying the last bit of flames out. He looks back up, and nods towards the lab.
Alex picks the rest of his tattered shirt and the cracked plate, shaking his head though Hank can pick out a smile hiding underneath all the soot and grime.
"You suck, McCoy!" Alex yells out as he bounds out of the bunker. And Hank rolls his eyes, hooking the fire extinguisher back onto the wall and following Alex out.
[Download @ Mediafire | the BOX ]
Like this selection? Head over to soundwire for more! :)
[hank/alex xm:fc ; a ficmix]
Twelve songs and twelve snippets pertaining to Messrs Hank McCoy and Alex Summers. Basically I just listened to a single song until I cranked out a drabble. Youtube link to the MV if available are viewable through the song title. Download links of the songs at the bottom.
SPECTOR | grey shirt & tie (the big pink remix)
"I don't think this is a good idea," Alex whines, tugging on vest and buttoning up while trying to stuff his feet in the leather loafers on loan from Charles.
"It'll be over in a few hours," Hank placates with a light hum, adjusting his tie in the mirror. His eyes flicker over his shoulder, at Alex crossing his arms as he stares at his own feet.
"Not a good fit?" Hank asks.
"Nah, it's fine, just--" Alex stops, looking up at Hank who finally turned around, fully dressed.
He still looked geeky-- gray plaid, his regular clunky glasses, but something was different.
Shoulders back. Head tilted upwards. Easy, relaxed smile aimed right at him. Alex shivered, feeling goosebumps slither down his back.
"Ready?"
"Sure, why not," Alex mumbled, tripping over himself as he gets up. Hank laughs softly and heads out of the room, with Alex cursing at himself, the blush reaching his ears.
GLASSER | home
He smells dry. Like wood and anise stars and dying embers in a fireplace. He tastes sharp-- like lime and sea salt and shiso leaves and autumn-- not that Hank ever tasted Alex before, but that's what he imagines it would be like.
Sometimes, when the smirks and the glares and the insults get to be too much, Hank closes his eyes and starts a low hum in the pit of his stomach that to anyone else would be growling. Because unfortunately, Alex smells the best to him.
D'ANCONIA | elodie
"C'mon Alex!" Raven shouts at him from across the room, waving her beer bottle in the air. "Even Hank's dancing!"
Alex grins, watching Sean, Darwin, Angel, and Hank all on their feet and jamming to whatever they manage to find lying around the mansion. None of them are really "dancing", save for Angel, though her writhing looks comparable to the spastic jumping and jerking Sean is doing. Darwin is gyrating at an alarming rate, and Hank--
whatever he's doing shouldn't even be called dancing. His arms are bent and close to his chest and he's spinning around, occasionally bumping into someone. But it's impossible to miss the serene, sweet smile playing across his lips as he whirls around with his eyes closed, shaking his head from side to side.
And Alex can't say no to that.
MIIKE SNOW | devil's work
"Dammit, fucking open up Hank! HANK!"
Hank scribbled another loop on the margins of his notes, ignoring the pounding on his door and the smoky smell indicating that Alex had already unsuccessfully tried to cut his way into the laboratory.
"I know you're in there, Hank!"
Hank grits his teeth, just because his lab was right next to the bunker didn't mean that Alex need to or even should find every possible moment to barge in.
He presses the button that allows the heavy titanium doors to slide open, finding a seething Alex waiting for him.
Just in time to get clocked in the face.
Hank staggers back into the lab, gingerly feeling his cheek. He moves his jaw from side to side and swipes his tongue against his teeth to check for bleeding and loose teeth.
He then steps forward, hunches down, and charges, using his shoulder to ram Alex into the opposite wall. Alex's body makes a loud crack into the concrete behind him and slides down, his head lolling onto his shoulder.
"Sheee-it," he hissed out, and abandoning his anger, Hank quickly kneels down, inspecting the damage.
"Are you alright? Does it hurt--"
WHAM! Hank skids a few feet away, clutching his chest where Alex had kicked him. He's collecting his breath when Alex pounces on him, letting his punches fly.
After this, it dissolves into nothing more than senseless blows. Hank gets smacked more than anything, though he's pretty sure he got bitten once or twice. Eventually, he manages to grab both of Alex's swinging wrists.
"What," Hank gasped out, "do you want?"
A goofy grin spread over Alex's stupid, stupid face and Hank just wants to drive his knee into his stomach to make him stop.
"I forgot."
ALEX WINSTON | velvet elvis
"I mean, can you imagine? That bacteria outnumbers us a trillion to one? That we're basically walking bacteria hosts?"
"Sure," Alex plays along, clicking the kitchen table with his fingertips, propping his head up with his other arm.
"That we wouldn't even be here without these things, that we evolved with them in the most--"
"What's your favorite color?" Alex snaps.
"...excuse me?"
"I know about the migratory patterns of Canadian geese. I know about three hundred years of Peruvian history. I know about genetics and adenine and I know more about existentialism than I care to know. I'm starting to understand my own powers. I don't know a goddamn thing about you, Hank McCoy."
Hank snaps his mouth shut. Blinks. Alex stares back. "Well?"
"I like red," he admits, after a while.
"Correct," Alex says, ignoring Hank's confused face, "now what about favorite pizza topping?"
NO CEREMONY| hurtlove (dawn golden and rosy cross remix)
*epilepsy warning
You want him. Bad. So, so, so bad.
But it isn't a want that starts and ends with your libido; it's a want that is deep and dark and driven solely by your id. It's the way that you looks over at him sitting sideways on the armchair, legs slung over on the arm rests and his eyes closed, and all you want to do is go over and sniff his hair. It's a sick, beautiful want that entertains ideas of you pulling his eyelids open to see his warm, honey eyes and touch them, pressing down hard. It's a want that wishes you'd just kiss him only to feel on your tongue the ridges of his teeth, from his molars to his incisors and back again. It's a want that wants to peel back the skin on his chest so you can marvel at his wide sternum and drag your fingers along his ribcage, watching his lungs shudder and his heart pulse. It's a want that makes you want, more than anything, to live in him.
And all of sudden, he wakes up to you staring from across the room. You pull back as if shocked, but all he does is scrunch up his nose and fumble for his glasses.
"Alex, what are you doing?"
THE SNOWDROPPERS | do the stomp (spank rock remix)
Sean's not stupid.
He supposes it's pretty easy to not notice him, and by extension, to think that he's too "out there" to understand what's going on. But with the way that Alex and Hank dance around each other and then snipping at him to stop laughing when they stammer or avert their eyes away from each other is getting to be too much.
Like how Alex is practically lying on top of Hank while they're watching a movie, stroking one big blue arm like it was a cat, with Hank making happy, rumbling sounds in the back of his throat. Every now and again, Alex will loudly declare something (real or otherwise) about Hank that irks him, all without ever getting up from the little cocoon he's made for himself with Hank's fluffy arm draped around him and a gigantic wooly afghan on his lap that doesn't get distributed evenly between him and Hank.
Sean would feel sorry for Hank, except the big lug seems so happy being a furnace and personal popcorn feeder for Alex, that he just throws a cushion at both of their heads, just to make them stop cooing over each other for a minute.
ACTIVE CHILD | playing house (chad valley remix)
"Pass the salt?"
Hank's eyes flickers up. It's easily in Alex's reach, but Hank picks it up and drops the delicate glass into Alex's waiting hand. He resumes eating, nothing left to say.
Charles still hasn't come back from the hospital.
None of them can claim any mastery in the kitchen. Even the normally buoyant Sean is despondently shifting the pasta around his plate.
It's too quiet.
Beast shifts in his seat. There's still half of his dinner left on his plate, but he gets up and rumbles, "I'm not hungry," before scraping the rest in the trash and washing his plate. The other two don't give so much as a hum in recognition. Hank looks at the both of them, before leaving the kitchen as quietly as possible.
--
"Sorry," Alex breathes into his fur, delirious, sometime past midnight. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry. So sorry."
And Hank has nothing left to say.
UNIFORMS | 1020 trickery lane
Alex teasing Hank is nothing new-- after months and months of being called uncreative nicknames, Hank learned not to take them to heart and in a way, realized it was some stupid, roundabout way for Alex to maintain some feeble form of masculinity, to be some sort of alpha male of the group. Hank understands-- he's been to Botswana during his stint at Harvard as a study abroad program to study gorillas. He already publish several papers on primate aggression and hiearchy; Alex's behavior follows his theories to a T.
Until the younger teen starts winking at him. Grinning at him like there's no tomorrow, leaning closer and invading his personal space, and adopting a coy tone of voice while talking to Hank, no matter if there people present or not.
It's disconcerting, since this never happened with the gorillas and the even more terrifying implication that his research was wrong.
So when Alex plonks right in front him one morning at the breakfast with a big wink and a "morning, beautiful," Hank sets his coffee right down and locks eyes with Alex before grinning widely, winking right back, "thanks, gorgeous."
He turns around to leave, not even caring what Alex's reaction would be, feeling utterly mortified (though he can hear Sean's howling laughter even from his lab across the mansion). It certainly shifted the balance somewhat, when Alex wouldn't look at him in the eye for a few days.
BANG GANG | forever now
Hank wakes up feeling a hand running through his hair.
It's late afternoon, with only hazy light slivers and dust particles floating visible without his glasses on. Still, he doesn't move, content to feel the fingers drag through and press on his scalp. He finds Alex's other hand lying on his chest, and he reaches up to squeeze it, which gets him a squeeze back.
"Awake yet?"
"I don't want to be," Hank admits, a wide yawn threatening to be unleashed.
"There's still an hour until dinner."
Hank grunts, and turns his head into the juncture between Alex's neck and shoulder. The man squirms as Hank also curls an arm around his waist, and they resettle with Hank lying mostly on top of Alex.
"Then I'll ask you to keep quiet for an hour," Hank sighs in Alex's ear, pushing down with his hips slightly. "Would you do that for me?"
"Yes," Alex croaked out in the end, bringing his arms around Hank's neck to let their lips touch. "Yes."
OUTASIGHT | figure eight (discotech remix)
The first day of May opened up to brilliant, blue skies and Alex dragged out a picnic basket from the pantry and stuffed with a bright red checkered cloth along with anything that looked vaugely edible in the house without needing for it to cook. After hassling Hank out of his lab, promising it'll "only take five minutes", they're now on a wide, rolling hill overlooking the mansion on the left and a small pond with a cluster of trees on the right. Hank obediently nibbles at the swiss and salami on rye sandwich Alex had slapped together an hour ago, not even breathing a word about the lack of condiments or vegetables. Alex is too busy watching Hank's tongue flick out to lick at his lips to pay too much attention to his own poorly made lunch. After Hank's downed half the lemonade to compensate for the dryness, Alex pulls the thermos away, setting it down before he pushes Hank down the hill. He quickly takes a swig of lemonade, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then starts running.
--
They trudge back to the house as the sun is starting to go down, with grass stains everywhere and dirt rubbed into their faces.
"Let's do this again tomorrow." Alex demands more than suggests, swinging the picnic basket violently around, and Hank leans down to brush a stray grass blade out of his hair.
"I've got work to do," Hank says into Alex's hair, and Alex whacks him in the knees with the basket.
(They go anyways for the next two weeks.)
Bonus （won't be on in the zip):
NELL | comeback
Click to view(warning: may not be suitable for those prone to epilepsy.)
He knows just about everything about Alex. Physically, that is. He needs to in order to design the most efficient and functional plate for the mutant to use. He still doesn't have a single clue what goes on up in Alex's head and he thinks that even if he did have telepathy, it'd still be confusing.
But everything just flies out the window once he watches Alex use his powers. The whole bunker is lit up with flames and light and red, red, red. By the end of it, half of the room is burning, and Alex is in the middle of it all, panting and gasping, eyes watering and coughing and Hank rushes in with a fire extinguisher. The gears in his head start to click and whir back to life as he methodically sweep back and forth to smother the flames, trying to figure out all the modifications and tweaks--
"I fucked up again, huh."
And there it is-- even worse than angry Alex or hungover Alex or whiny Alex-- there's this one. The one that has his shoulders slumped and staring at his hands with a scowl and a betrayed look on his face.
So Hank says the only thing he can think that would be appropriate.
"Shut the fuck up."
Alex's head shoots up, and Hank keeps a straight face, spraying the last bit of flames out. He looks back up, and nods towards the lab.
Alex picks the rest of his tattered shirt and the cracked plate, shaking his head though Hank can pick out a smile hiding underneath all the soot and grime.
"You suck, McCoy!" Alex yells out as he bounds out of the bunker. And Hank rolls his eyes, hooking the fire extinguisher back onto the wall and following Alex out.
[Download @ Mediafire | the BOX ]
Like this selection? Head over to soundwire for more! :)