Fic: Fossils Dead In Tar Pits
Title: Fossils Dead in Tar Pits
Pairing: Abraxas/Severus, Lucius/Severus
Rating: R
Warnings: Ritual violence, sex, death.
A/N: Big thank you to eumenides1 and anderyn for correcting my word usage and making this fic better. It contains vague recollections...
A dream of fingertips grasping the iron mouth of the door:
Candlelight transformed the laboratory into a puzzle box of nightmare places. A table, scarred with acid, littered with glass bottles, cauldrons and the perfumes of a thousand poisons and potions. A system of carrels, filled with scrolls and books- occasionally visible, a spidery handwriting where the letters looked more like alchemical symbols than the Roman alphabet ought to look. A glass cage filled with twisted greenish smoke, sometimes forming dark eyes or a clawed human hand, impossibly elongated. Curtains and chains, where bodies hung, though now all swung empty like the nooses on a hangman's tree- all save one.
A boy hung in the shackles. He was, perhaps, a few years older than Severus. His brown hair shielded his face so that his features remained hidden. Some way of escaping the humiliation of his nakedness in that clinical room. His body was smooth and beautifully formed, somewhat flushed. The room was warm, but what Severus suspected caused the flush were the strong, scarred hands of Abraxas Malfoy, trailing along the curve of a thigh, tracing the hard pink star of a nipple.
Abraxas himself wore only an open robe of patterned silk. The patterns seemed to shift hypnotically and form unspeakable runes which were broken apart and strung again in new patterns as his body moved. His long hair, jet black liberally streaked with silver, as though a net of moonlight had been draped along its strands, shifted patterns of darker than the black silk, patterns of lighter than the radiance of the light.
The chiseled planes of his face caught the light, smiling a smile that would make the Mona Lisa shudder and shift uncomfortably in a suddenly fantasy turned biting and cold. That smile… like the edge of a candle flame against numbed skin or the sizzle of acid through the air before it burns. That smile so like the small curved knife he drew across the boy's unresisting flesh.
The blood was a color that screamed in the monochrome of the room. The muted tones faded beside it, and suddenly, Severus felt hot and sick from watching, for there was at once nothing sexual about the way Abraxas touched that child, and only the runes carved into his twisted flesh had meaning.
The eyes in the glass cage watched, hungrily, and there, deep in the muscles of a perfect abdomen that never in a million years mine Abraxas' knife thrust, slithering its hungry way deeper and deeper, as if it were the rhythmic motion of sweet slow sex, as if it were the most intimate moment in the world.
Severus knew that if he could see Abraxas' eyes at that moment he would have been haunted by them.
He saw Abraxas kneel, press his mouth to the wound. It came away smeared red, as if by woman's lipstick. Then, as the boy sagged in his chains, finding the arms of unconsciousness for a new lover, Abraxas painted the same runes over the glass cage. The smoke within pulsed and gleamed, suddenly beautiful and complex and alive…
But not as beautiful as the seraph of shadow and ice, not so complex as the faint smile that still tugged those deadly lips, not so alive as the burning incandescent void yawning behind eyes like grey ice shimmering with grey rainbows. Cold rainbows.
When Abraxas turned and beckoned with his long-fingered hand, its skin scarred with small cuts and acid burns like Severus' own, there was no denying that beckoning.
There was only the sweet rush of skin against skin, the softness of long hair covering him in adulation and ecstasy, the practiced caress of ancient hands which still looked young and lovely… and the scent of mint mixed with some opiate, something of poppy dark and addictive. Something that caught behind the tongue and was never forgotten.
A dream of fingertips stroking the worn nap of velvet still haunted by his scent:
Lucius lay with his hair stretched against the black sheets so that he looked carved all in white. Snow or ivory. Tinted impossibilities. Fragmentary. Illusive. The rainbows that danced across his cornea were grey rainbows. He held Severus' hand so hard that a slow bit of pain uncoiled from the joints.
He spoke of his father as if he hated him, as if some darkness deep inside him had to unfold. His words had no inflection, unwinding into nothingness like one reliving some ancient trauma.
"Fossils dead in tar pits, preserved forever," he said. "Dead for weeks and yet his smell is still here in the bedding. Peppermint and poppy. His ghost lies here between us like a wall. As if all the atrocities have woven together into an elaborate tapestry, never-ending, bleached with the love of decades and stained with thoughtless betrayals. Fossils dead in tar pits, forgotten forever. Waiting in hell to hear me mention him again, the old fool."
Severus could see in his eyes the slow dull burning, the need for love wrestling with the pull toward hate. Mythological, and somehow sensible, within the cold spirit of a man.
Lucius touched his lover's jaw lightly. "The dead have no power."
Severus did not say a word, seeing how something caught behind Lucius' tongue and again and again, he tried to swallow. He allowed himself to be pulled down against the sheets, gazing into the reflected universes of steel and mazed edges in Lucius' eyes. Eyes like a cunning and complex arrangement of mirrors, where whatever was reflected was not necessarily behind.
"What will you remember forever about him, Severus?"
Severus was silent for a long time. Finally he selected his lie. "His smile."
"Yes," Lucius said, and the sigh in his voice was its own desperate lie. "Nobody has ever smiled like he smiled."
Pairing: Abraxas/Severus, Lucius/Severus
Rating: R
Warnings: Ritual violence, sex, death.
A/N: Big thank you to eumenides1 and anderyn for correcting my word usage and making this fic better. It contains vague recollections...
A dream of fingertips grasping the iron mouth of the door:
Candlelight transformed the laboratory into a puzzle box of nightmare places. A table, scarred with acid, littered with glass bottles, cauldrons and the perfumes of a thousand poisons and potions. A system of carrels, filled with scrolls and books- occasionally visible, a spidery handwriting where the letters looked more like alchemical symbols than the Roman alphabet ought to look. A glass cage filled with twisted greenish smoke, sometimes forming dark eyes or a clawed human hand, impossibly elongated. Curtains and chains, where bodies hung, though now all swung empty like the nooses on a hangman's tree- all save one.
A boy hung in the shackles. He was, perhaps, a few years older than Severus. His brown hair shielded his face so that his features remained hidden. Some way of escaping the humiliation of his nakedness in that clinical room. His body was smooth and beautifully formed, somewhat flushed. The room was warm, but what Severus suspected caused the flush were the strong, scarred hands of Abraxas Malfoy, trailing along the curve of a thigh, tracing the hard pink star of a nipple.
Abraxas himself wore only an open robe of patterned silk. The patterns seemed to shift hypnotically and form unspeakable runes which were broken apart and strung again in new patterns as his body moved. His long hair, jet black liberally streaked with silver, as though a net of moonlight had been draped along its strands, shifted patterns of darker than the black silk, patterns of lighter than the radiance of the light.
The chiseled planes of his face caught the light, smiling a smile that would make the Mona Lisa shudder and shift uncomfortably in a suddenly fantasy turned biting and cold. That smile… like the edge of a candle flame against numbed skin or the sizzle of acid through the air before it burns. That smile so like the small curved knife he drew across the boy's unresisting flesh.
The blood was a color that screamed in the monochrome of the room. The muted tones faded beside it, and suddenly, Severus felt hot and sick from watching, for there was at once nothing sexual about the way Abraxas touched that child, and only the runes carved into his twisted flesh had meaning.
The eyes in the glass cage watched, hungrily, and there, deep in the muscles of a perfect abdomen that never in a million years mine Abraxas' knife thrust, slithering its hungry way deeper and deeper, as if it were the rhythmic motion of sweet slow sex, as if it were the most intimate moment in the world.
Severus knew that if he could see Abraxas' eyes at that moment he would have been haunted by them.
He saw Abraxas kneel, press his mouth to the wound. It came away smeared red, as if by woman's lipstick. Then, as the boy sagged in his chains, finding the arms of unconsciousness for a new lover, Abraxas painted the same runes over the glass cage. The smoke within pulsed and gleamed, suddenly beautiful and complex and alive…
But not as beautiful as the seraph of shadow and ice, not so complex as the faint smile that still tugged those deadly lips, not so alive as the burning incandescent void yawning behind eyes like grey ice shimmering with grey rainbows. Cold rainbows.
When Abraxas turned and beckoned with his long-fingered hand, its skin scarred with small cuts and acid burns like Severus' own, there was no denying that beckoning.
There was only the sweet rush of skin against skin, the softness of long hair covering him in adulation and ecstasy, the practiced caress of ancient hands which still looked young and lovely… and the scent of mint mixed with some opiate, something of poppy dark and addictive. Something that caught behind the tongue and was never forgotten.
A dream of fingertips stroking the worn nap of velvet still haunted by his scent:
Lucius lay with his hair stretched against the black sheets so that he looked carved all in white. Snow or ivory. Tinted impossibilities. Fragmentary. Illusive. The rainbows that danced across his cornea were grey rainbows. He held Severus' hand so hard that a slow bit of pain uncoiled from the joints.
He spoke of his father as if he hated him, as if some darkness deep inside him had to unfold. His words had no inflection, unwinding into nothingness like one reliving some ancient trauma.
"Fossils dead in tar pits, preserved forever," he said. "Dead for weeks and yet his smell is still here in the bedding. Peppermint and poppy. His ghost lies here between us like a wall. As if all the atrocities have woven together into an elaborate tapestry, never-ending, bleached with the love of decades and stained with thoughtless betrayals. Fossils dead in tar pits, forgotten forever. Waiting in hell to hear me mention him again, the old fool."
Severus could see in his eyes the slow dull burning, the need for love wrestling with the pull toward hate. Mythological, and somehow sensible, within the cold spirit of a man.
Lucius touched his lover's jaw lightly. "The dead have no power."
Severus did not say a word, seeing how something caught behind Lucius' tongue and again and again, he tried to swallow. He allowed himself to be pulled down against the sheets, gazing into the reflected universes of steel and mazed edges in Lucius' eyes. Eyes like a cunning and complex arrangement of mirrors, where whatever was reflected was not necessarily behind.
"What will you remember forever about him, Severus?"
Severus was silent for a long time. Finally he selected his lie. "His smile."
"Yes," Lucius said, and the sigh in his voice was its own desperate lie. "Nobody has ever smiled like he smiled."