Deconstruction - [Brownham Suspense AU]
Deconstruction: a philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical oppositions are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers
Warnings: dark fic with a hell lot of ambiguities
Everyone has a pressure point; press it long enough, hard enough and even the softest of gazes, the warmest of mouths turn ugly. Will presses, and sees the glass fracture far and wide, lines of break quickly zipping across beautiful colored Chihuly.
There’s a way to gut a fish, and there’s a way to gut a person. Emotionally, physically, in the end it’s all the same.
Matthew’s nails dig into the skin of his shoulders, leaving sharp crescents of pain. It’s probably only a fraction of what he really wants to do to Will. His face is a twist of pale white. Even his lips have lost color.
Will breathes out through his mouth, the air ghosting across Matthew’s chin and making him flinch. He almost. He almost regrets. It is 4:58 PM. He should be rummaging through the fridge, looking for something they’ll have for dinner. He should be texting Matthew, telling him to pick up some groceries on the way back home from work.
Except, neither of them are where they should be, and here they are. Here they are.
Something hot hits his shirt. Will doesn’t realize it until it slips past his navel, and leaves a translucent wet trail across his skin. Why, Matthew seems to snarl, even with his mouth tightly shut.
Will’s thought through the answer. He knows it. Has carefully dissected this and them with shaking hands. He’s pried open the rib cage of their home with a terrible snap, and lifted the flap of chest skin with a great finality.
“This isn’t sustainable, Matthew. It’s unhealthy.”
Matthew sucks in a breath of air, and the expansion of his chest can almost be felt in the air between them. His fingers come away from Will’s skin, one by one.
The clearing of throat is necessary, yet it still leaves Matthew’s voice low and hoarse. “We are sustaining, Will. We’ve…made changes. I promised I’d leave certain things behind, and I have.”
Will finds himself thinking about the marks on his shoulders. They sting.
He wants to run his fingers along the sides of Matthew’s stomach, and dig them into the grooves of his sharp hips. It would be so easy. To fall back into each other with a mad, a…a crazy –I think he’s just misunderstood– fervor. Will thinks of every time Matthew apologizes with lips tracing his inseam, and eager hands drawing patterns into his thighs. He recalls all the instances they’d waged battles of silence and meaningful looks, only to end up fucking against peeling wall paper, and worn upholstery.
All the we should, no, talk, later, please, god yes.
“It’s not enough?” Matthew counters, half asking and half bitter. There. That bitterness reminds Will of how much time has passed since, since they first met. He doesn’t remember that deprecating unhappy edge being there before. Whereas that crooked smirk was always confident and bold, now it’s only a faint twisted shadow, gone from his mouth only when Will passes a trembling thumb over his lips.
No, it’s not enough, Will wants to say, but that line of thought wars with it’s too much.
There are too many apologies, in various forms, from Matthew. Will doesn’t bat them away, doesn’t press him for reasons – I have my imagination–, but it’s hard to ignore when even the dogs skirt around him and the sharp tang of whiskey in his breath becomes a constant. He woke up this morning in a bath of his own sweat, a ludicrous thought on his mind: I know that smell.
Onion layered beneath soap and warm water is muffled desperation and a distinct metal bite. Someone being subdued with a pair of clever hands, hands that caressed his calves earlier that evening, hands that he held down with a building note of hysteria perched in his throat.
Will leans into the curve of Matthew’s neck, inhaling familiarity and something that was once so bright and promising. He knows that smell, and it too was once red and full of life.
They don’t, he decides, without surprise.
“This is going to last forever, Mr. Graham”, Matthew says, looking into the green and yellow span of their backyard forest. The deck extends a half dozen meters down over a sharp slope. Leaning against the edge with a head of raven, and a loosely languid pose, Matthew grins back at him.
The bailiff was a bitch to get on that stag’s head.
It’s a cool autumn day, but the sun is warm against Will’s neck. For the tiniest moment, or for the longest time in his memories, Will believes.
I’ll be the Chesapeake Ripper now.