FIC: The Rest Is Silence
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Title: The Rest Is Silence
Length: 3,200 words
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex scenes (while drunk)
Genre: Mildly (morbidly) humourous, mildly depressing
Characters, Pairings: Denmark/Hamlet
Summary: We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Because, really, incest is definitely a step up from an all-out royal massacre.
Notes: Filled for the Hetalia Kink Meme. Original request: " Something is gay in the state of Denmark." Sooo, crossover with Shakespeare's Hamlet, possibly the most mind-numbing and depressing play to play in the history of plays. Thank you, SparkNotes and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)! I also cannot help but feel that I ended with a bit of a Mourning Becomes Electra kind of mood towards the end of the story. Something to think about, I guess.
There was a storm that night, like many of those that preceded it in these long, terrible years of darkness. Denmark mourned the death of its king, the good King Hamlet, the noble king, brave and eloquent and just. The earth was moist with tears that fell from rain clouds. His sorrow was as grey as the skies, but he held intact his dignity for he was a great kingdom. Lords come and go. He would not allow himself to disintegrate over the one. He stood on the topmost of the castle’s keep, black mantle protecting him from the chill of the rain, mourning vestments weighed down by the water. He paid it no heed.
Denmark cast his gaze over the people, his people, the Danes. The courtiers and the servants’ garbs were an overwhelming black and it was mercy unto his soul. He was glad for the unity in woe that tied together the feeble bonds of humans, now bereft of their lord. He was proud of Hamlet, the King.
Had the progression been as natural as it had been writ, Hamlet the Prince would have claimed the throne, but it was not so.
“Marriage,” he murmured in the iciness of night, breath twisting like smoke in the darkness. “To replace death with joy.” He smiled, a thin curve that did not quite reach his eyes. He, being who and what he was, was not against such convenient unions, but he would not quite yet shed his veil of black. Not quite yet.
“We are not amused. At all.”
Denmark turned, no surprise in his mannerisms but a greatly relieved grin refreshing his face of its grimness.
“Your Majesty,” he said, all smiles as he clasped the apparition’s shoulder in a less than respectful manner. The king did no more than scowl at the gesture.
“You’re looking pleasantly deceased,” Denmark said conversationally.
“Your manners are still lacking,” he admonished sharply. “We shudder to think of what will become of the House of Denmark.”
“Well,” Denmark shrugged, but it was lost beneath the thick of his mantle and the darkness of night, of receding storms. “There won’t be another King Hamlet, at the very least.”
“Yes, we’d heard of that,” the ghost replied, eyes regarding Denmark warily. “We’ve also heard that the varlet we once called brother has married our queen.”
“Oh, is that what’s bothering you? I would have thought it a step up from an all-out royal massacre.”
The king glared. Denmark’s grin brightened.
“Just a joke to break the ice, Majesty. Now what’s gotten you earthbound?”
“Our son,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, having forgotten what it was like to deal with his nation all the time he had been away at war and in the cold embrace of death. He sighed softly. “He must ascend the throne.”
“There’s kind of someone on the throne already,” Denmark helpfully pointed out.
The king glared again. “We are aware of the obvious.”
“Hey, don’t get all snappy on me.” Denmark rolled his eyes. “Are you going to go kill Claudius or something?”
“If we could, we would have done it three hours ago.”
Denmark laughed. At least death hadn’t killed off his sense of humour completely.
After a moment, he was able to collect himself and he smiled his boyish smile at the disgruntled ghost of his former monarch.
“You do realise that I’m not going to interfere, right?” He asked with a toss of his head, gesturing to the bailey. “It’s not allowed, and frankly, I have no interest in domestic politics.”
“Yes, we were aware from the outset,” the king commented dryly, disappointment visible in his expression. “We do wish you’d reconsider, however.”
“Nope! Sorry, not going to happen.”
“Fine,” the king sighed.
They lingered on the keep for an hour or so, Denmark only somewhat shivering and the king levitating beside him. They commented idly on the state of the courts and exchanged some gossip regarding the courtiers that moved in and out of the castle. The moon moved in the sky, a sliver of a crescent that provided little light. There was the horn, marking the change of the guard.
“It is time,” the king said, floating down from the keep. “May God watch over you, and you over this House.”
“I’ll be fine,” Denmark replied easily, a little too knowingly. “It’s the House that needs watching.”
“Indeed,” the king mused. “And the Norwegians.”
“Oh god, must you remind me,” Denmark rolled his eyes and scowled. The king smiled faintly and bade him farewell.
The skies had long since cleared. Denmark mourned still, but at least it mourned with some amusement at the fact that its dead king was spooking poor night watches in his free time.
Even if it was a terrible idea.
---
As tradition normally went, Denmark would have introduced himself to his new lord and king the night of his coronation, but as the fates would have it, even prior to his little meeting with his previous king, he had decided to delay the introduction a little. There was no point in premature relationships. He wanted to sit back and watch a little more, see what would happen to the House of Denmark.
In the weeks that passed, the old king’s ghost would seek him out for a little chat as he waited for the appropriate changing of the guard. He disappeared once the sun broke the horizon, but finally, one evening, the king approached Denmark with a smug expression and absolutely no desire to haunt the night watch.
Denmark realised that it coincided with Hamlet’s sudden change in demeanour.
“His Highness is awfully handsome,” he commented to the ghost, watching from the window of the keep.
“His mother is a handsome woman,” the king might have swelled a little as he praised his son. “But it is his wit that gives him such looks. Wittenberg has strengthened his mind and tongue.”
“I can tell,” Denmark grinned, glancing briefly at the king. “He sounds pretty smart even when he’s pretending to be crazy.”
“Intelligence cannot be suppressed, my nation. It is in his very blood.”
“That explains Claudius, then.”
The king scowled almost immediately. “If we could strangle you…”
“Three hours ago. Gotcha the first time.”
“Lord have mercy,” the king muttered under his breath.
“Majesty, I suggest you leave the watching over to me. Why don’t you court a fetching maiden of equal circumstance, hmm?”
The king glared again, swore under his breath and begrudgingly left Denmark alone thereafter. Denmark smiled at his departure. Engaging in chatter with the king every other night wasn’t particularly healthy. He hoped it wouldn’t begin a trend because, as much as he did enjoy the company of some of his kings, he preferred it if the dead remained, as the good Lord had intended it, dead. God knows how many of them had died in unsavoury conditions. He really didn’t need to have all of them hawking over his shoulders when he had matters of state at hand. He particularly did not need bored, dead monarchs to tell him how to do his job.
Hamlet entered the gallery, book in hand, and though it was open, he did not read from it, merely stared at it in deep thought, a light frown on his face. Denmark deliberately backed into him, causing him to look up with a start, the open book pressing against his chest.
“Your Highness,” Denmark’s eyes twinkled as they usually did, meeting Hamlet’s stricken gaze with warmth. He broke eye contact and bowed deeply. “My most profound apologies.”
“No,” Hamlet replied, hand on Denmark’s shoulder. “It is no fault of yours. Please rise.”
“You are too kind, Your Highness.”
Hamlet’s expression softened and he snorted lightly.
“Your impression of me is undeserving, good sir.”
“Nay, I wouldn’t quite say that,” Denmark grinned, and Hamlet was captivated by the odd camaraderie he felt when placed before those eyes and lips, drawn to the almost familiar stranger. A courtier? It seemed rather likely, though he looked more brazen than refined. Hamlet had even forgotten to play the madness of a fool. Oh dear.
“You are everything I’ve thought you to be.”
Hamlet was startled out of his thoughts.
“Good night, Your Highness,” Denmark bowed, retreating by a step before the prince could speak further. “Rest well.”
As he disappeared down the corridor, Denmark caught sight of Hamlet watching him leave.
He would be a good king, Denmark thought.
Would be.
---
There were no coincidences in the thread of fate, taught the holy book. Denmark knew it so, because he had been the one to sit with both Hamlets when they were children and read the verses to them so that they would remember them. He had done it with most kings of the past. He knew the words like they had been painted into his mind. For all his mischief, Denmark was no brigand. He was still a nation, and he had the ethos of his people in his thoughts constantly. He did not serve the House of Denmark, but he taught it to serve the good land and all the people who tilled it with their bare hands. He guided the hands of the kings. And when they did not rise for their subjects, he refused to catch them as they fell from power. He refused to interfere, and for good reason. Even if he should. Even if he could smell trouble from a mile away.
No coincidences. Not even when Hamlet’s doubt-filled mind that had reduced his logic to a mess of inarticulate emotions caused a second collision in the long passages of the castle. The prince, too shook up to do much more, was enveloped in Denmark’s strong arms that stopped him from stumbling back-first to the ground. He flushed in embarrassment and averted his gaze as Denmark’s hands lingered around his waist and slowly slipped away.
“Please be more cautious, Your Highness,” Denmark’s lips quirked.
“Caution favours the calm,” he replied wearily.
“Are you discontent?” Denmark asked with subtle concern, brows knitting together rather emotively. “Perhaps your heart is aroused.”
Hamlet’s eyes widened.
“How could you…” He bit his lip, shook his head. “Was it… obvious?”
Denmark smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s a gift of mine. Perhaps sharing your thoughts might help?”
“These feelings are inspiring doubt whereas I had been resigned to fate,” Hamlet answered him, compelled to speak for some strange reason, inexplicably drawn to the strange man. His air was that of safety and confidentiality and warmth, like Horatio but not quite.
“Ah, the thread of fate,” Denmark chuckled. “Who decides what is and is not fate?”
“I don’t know where these feelings will take me,” Hamlet replied in frustration.
“Perhaps it would be prudent to go to the root of these feelings. Pray, what aroused you so?”
“A speech,” Hamlet’s answer was brief, mortifying. Denmark stepped closer, lowering his voice.
“Impassioned?”
“Incredibly.”
“Inspiring?”
“Yes,” Hamlet breathed. “Yes.”
“And these feelings give you doubt?” Denmark gently placed his hand flat over Hamlet’s chest, an action far too intimate for court, but the prince merely stared down at his hand, touching it tentatively with uncertain fingers before he covered it with his own and squeezed.
“It is as though you can see into my soul,” he whispered reverently, slowly drawing his gaze upwards and drinking in the other man’s eyes. “If only you knew how wretched it feels now.”
“Good prince,” Denmark cupped Hamlet’s chin with his other hand and smiled. “You should only feel as wretched as you are.”
And there.
Right there.
Fingers that ghosted over his skin, lingered for too long, eyes that were too meaningful… and Denmark retreated.
Bowed.
Left.
Hamlet’s face was flushed but he did not know it, and the wretchedness of his soul began to twist painfully in his gut. He curled his fingers into his hair, raking it back, trying to calm the thunder in his chest as the doubt multiplied tenfold and threatened to tear him apart and grind him to dust. Doubt and doubt and so much doubt and what was he doing? What was he doing?
To be, or not to be. Oh god, how his heart hurt.
---
He had seen sorrow before. It had a shape, a colour, a taste. It was as much a plague as it was a feeling. And in it, he had seen men drown. Countless men.
“Dear prince,” Denmark murmured. “You’re drunk out of your mind.”
“Still your tongue,” he slurred, anguished, clutching to the wineskin and weeping to the heavens at the seat of the chapel’s altar. The hour was too late for the presence of any holy father, and Denmark was incredibly glad for it.
He kneeled by the prince, trying to pry away the wineskin.
“Why Ophelia?” Hamlet moaned. “What sin was worth sweet Ophelia?”
“Lust. Avarice. It could be anything, really,” Denmark replied lackadaisically, more occupied with the wineskin now that Hamlet finally relinquished it to him. He drank from it to relieve the drought of his throat and he closed his eyes, hearing only the soft sobs of his prince. He smelled earth, wet earth, freshly unturned. It was the scent of bones and flesh. Peering through the darkness, he saw the soil on Hamlet’s arms and knees and hands and couldn’t help the grin as he licked away the falling droplets of blood red wine from his lips.
“Don’t tell me you wanted to lie with the dead, Your Highness.”
“Hush,” Hamlet sobbed, covering his face. “How do you read my thoughts? Your lips and teeth and mouth and tongue are poison unto my soul. Your words frighten me. Your eyes tempt the safeguard of my heart. Stop your witchcraft, I cannot bear it… Don’t incite me!”
Denmark leaned closer, gently pushing Hamlet’s arms apart and pressing his wrists to the stone of the altar, gazing at him unblinkingly as the prince hiccupped and continued his mad tirade, head lolling from side to side as though in pain.
“The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals,” Hamlet babbled. “I loved you ever, oh sweet Ophelia, your beautiful eyes… Your hair… Let Hercules himself do what he may and I will hold your bones even as I rot in the earth and burn in hell. Oh father, my father, my king, what is this destiny? What is this fate? Innocent Ophelia, your lips beseech me even now and I cannot be apart from you. This is I! Hamlet the Dane!”
Denmark silenced him with a kiss, earnest and passionate until the prince gave in and wrapped his arms around his neck. His cold fingers divested Hamlet of his tunic, of his breeches, touching burning hot skin, and he shrugged out of his own vestments as Hamlet drunkenly tried to remove them. He moaned Ophelia’s name over and over again, slurring it until it was nothing more than a tangled string of sounds, and gladly drank clumsily from the wineskin once Denmark had taken a long swig from it. Wine drenched him, rubbed into his skin, tainted it.
“Hamlet,” Denmark whispered, grasping his cock and stroking it. “Beg.”
“I would be buried, I would- I would eat a, oh don’t stop.”
“Keep begging.” Denmark pressed kisses along his throat and down his chest, licking the wine, faltering hand slowly moving with each little hitch Hamlet conceded to him.
“Like animals,” Hamlet wailed. “Rutting like beasts, more, please, more, like a god…”
He stopped trying to speak once Denmark had descended low enough that his lips had replaced his hand and his tongue was curled around his cock, sucking hard and massaging his quivering thighs apart. Hamlet could feel every single motion and flick of that tongue, the trail of heat it left behind as it slid along his skin, and he moaned and begged as it teased him. He felt lips, puckered lips, kissing sensitive skin and trailing lower and sucking, and then the tongue easing him loose as he trembled. Fingers replacing tongue. Tongue returning to the mouth. Mouth closing over his cock. Two fingers, moving, in and out and in and out and in and…
Denmark licked his lips, drunk on the sensation of Hamlet writhing beneath him, with confused longing for a man who looked like his father and mother and lover and uncle and precious friend all at once. He was glad he had chased the dead king away when he had, that the ghost could not enter the house of God. He would never be in peace, otherwise if he had to come upon this scene. Sweet young Hamlet. Denmark remembered him as a boy, and how he had grown into a man. He had looked forward to his coronation.
Denmark pushed into him and relished the cry.
“Beg,” he ordered with a strained voice, grinding into wanton hips, grabbing Hamlet’s hair and jerking it back.
“More,” Hamlet gasped, clutching to Denmark and letting out another moan when Denmark drove into him. Drove again, and again.
Denmark’s breaths were shaky, eyes barely open now, and the smell of salt and wine overpowered him as he rolled his hips into Hamlet’s, the sound of skin slapping skin echoing sharply in the stillness of the chapel. Hamlet was tight and hot and on the brink of despair, brimming with emotions he couldn’t contain, and Denmark was more than willing to suck away the nectar of youth’s maddening vagaries from his prince, this illusion of love and responsibility, to grant him clarity.
It was a beautiful excuse.
Like a euphoric prince, naked and needy and alive only in the darkness of moonlight and mourning.
He licked his lips again, leaning back and pushing Hamlet’s thighs to his body to thrust in deeper. The sensations were overwhelming, overwhelming and good. He barely heard Hamlet’s moan, the scream for a name he may or may not have recognised, and as Hamlet orgasmed and lay spent beneath him, Denmark kept thrusting into him, into the tightening ring of muscle that pulled him in and clutched at him, and he finally came with a shudder, in syncopated pulses that made his strength wane.
Denmark sat erect in the throes of climax, eyes closed and head thrown back.
“Forgive me Lord,” he whispered breathlessly to the air, above the soft snores of an unconscious Hamlet. He imagined the stone cross of the chapel’s altar looming in front of him, severe and cold, like the House of Denmark. “I’m going to be sinning for a long time.”
---
It was raining again. Denmark was wrapped in his mantle as he stood on the keep, overseeing the funeral processions that began from the castle bailey. A wave of black, like the march of worker ants, drifted towards the cemetery, somber and dull and slow. They held aloft more than one body, and the highest body of all could not be seen under the heavy black velvet that covered him.
He would lay down a single pearly white lily at his grave, in honour of his poisoned father, but only after he bowed to Wermund, son of Wihtlæg, King of Denmark.
Denmark smiled softly.
The rest is silence.
Notes on Wihtlæg.