27. you can't reblog that post about laps and codependency and expect me to /not/ send this when i scroll down and see it
50 TYPES OF KISSES / ACCEPTING
𝚆𝙸𝙻𝙻 𝙿𝚄𝚃𝚂 𝚃𝙷𝙴𝙸𝚁 𝙼𝙾𝚄𝚃𝙷𝚂 𝚃𝙾𝙶𝙴𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁, and thinks of the can of peaches suspended in syrup that he’d wanted to crawl inside of as a child, of the honeybees who’d once made a hive in the walls of their rental house in Cohutta, GA. How the honey dripped out from under the trim boards for days and days even after they bees had been removed in a slow, gold-and-effervescent stream. Their mouths taste of the digestif: blackberries and caramel. It’s a dark flavour. Dark, sweet, and analgesic. The kisses that result have a tempered viscosity, a thickness. Expressing the magnitude of a rich internal friction.
Hannibal’s eyes are sharp and lucid, but glossed, and Will looks at them rather than into them when he pulls back by a fraction, observing while holding a hand against the way he’ll be swallowed down eventually. Will is sharp and focused now, direct, and dangerous. He has something in his possession. Not caught between his teeth, or between his thighs, not under him, pinned down—just on him, over him, freely given. Impossible for it to have been withheld from him, even though he didn’t have to fight or lie to get it: an absolutely undivided attention.
Not anyone’s attention. Hannibal’s attention. Will finds, with a strangely pleasant sensation in his throat, that it does make a difference to him. That’s curious, and rewarding. Hannibal’s hand skims his throat admiringly as if he can sense it there, Will’s pleasure; his momentary and casual acceptance of their singularity. Their accord. Will had been the one to cross the room to him, to bend over him, to put one knee between his legs on the chair, the other beside his hip, arms caging him on the armrests.
He kisses Hannibal again and lets their bodies sink close until they rest curved together, heavy with their own weight. Hannibal touches his spine, his hair, cups his skull—all with the attendant confidence of a man who knows the Eucharist intimately, a man who has been in the first pew every morning, preparing for this moment all his life. The consecration of idolatry. Real adoration. The whole beast, not just the bones. Will sags into the touch, and draws his knee around Hannibal’s hip until he his fully straddling him, fully in his lap.
When he pries his fingers under the back of Hannibal’s neatly-laid collar, Will is happy with the sentiment that they are sharing. He’s happy with the way Hannibal sits still, sets his forearms back on the armrests of the chair, and allows Will to pour over him like water. Like a scientist. Like a dog with a delightfully foul-smelling thing, ready to roll in it. He imagines that every time the eagle comes back to devour Prometheus’ liver, his mouth waters anew. The taste is just as stirring as the first time, and he’s just as ravenous for the texture. After he’s finished, he’s always just as sated. One time or a thousand times, the thrill is all the same.
Will ignores the fact that, in this scenario he’s constructed in his mind, Hannibal is the Titan and he’s the one whose hungry—who between them has given humanity more? not Will, he can acknowledge that even as he resents it—and pushes his fingers into the hard muscle between Hannibal’s diaphragm and abdomen through his shirt, knobbing the inner ‘v’ of the final four ribs. He presses against the place where his liver would be swelling out if he were opened by a beak. Hannibal doesn’t startle, or tense, only watches him curiously, utterly absorbed, relishing.
“The Greeks believed the the liver was the seat of human emotion.”
Hannibal hums in acknowledgment of the fact. Prometheus was punished for his passion. His destructive generosity. Zeus’ eagle is sustained for eternity by devouring the place of that passion every morning; sleeping with a belly full, nurtured by it every night. All he has to do is tolerate Prometheus’ agony—though maybe tolerate is the wrong word. Maybe, like the first little draw of blood, the pain becomes a Pavlovian bell for the both of them. Signaling the start, the end, and the start again. Classical conditioning.
Arguably, it’s a pretty good life for a bird of prey—until the end.
He can’t stand to look at Hannibal’s beatific smile. He’s pleased, so pleased, and it fills Will with light. The residual awareness that he inspires such delight just by being present, by willfully engaging, makes Will feel sharper than he has since childhood. Being looked at usually makes him feel muddied. Not now. He’s a wash of still water, reactive and rippling under the anticipation of touch. There’s a simper in Hannibal’s eyes—like he knows what Will is thinking; knows the punishment Will has metered out for him in his mind, and would hold himself in chains just for a chance to make it happen. To witness it. To be put in the stars with it once its over. Hannibal is generous, isn’t he? Hannibal is unerringly generous. Just hours ago his house was full of people. They’d left sated, every one.
Will’s breathing is spiking slowly but he settles his weight back easily on Hannibal’s legs and looks at him, hearing his own blood in his ears, measuring the abnormal reaction of his body. Lust is teenage behaviour, love is deeply, glaringly abnormal for him, but he’s glad the other people are gone. For no reason other than bargain-brand petulance, he pulls the silk kerchief from the breastpocket of Hannibal’s now open jacket.
Will feels full of love for him, enough to be sick on. A flush of colour has darkened his cheeks and his throat and his chest. He can feel it pooling in the jugular well at the base of his throat. It would be a good time—a perfect time, the best time—for the both of them to die.
