Warnings: Non-explicit slash (m/m). Some bad language. pwp or vignette, if you like
Notes: Thanks to Mona, CM, LT and TF for inspiration. But for heaven's sake, don't blame them! I just got to playing with words.

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Pomegranates
by Brighid

Once, a very long time ago, a girl got dragged screaming into hell.

Oddly enough, this story begins the same way, the same goddamned way. Maybe all stories do.

(If you listen you can hear, beneath it all, the sound of the earth opening up in the squeal of tires, the thunder of dark horses just below the

thump

thump

thump

of her body falling,

every night:

her body,

falling.)

But this time, it's no girl, just a pussy lawyer who knows everything about law and nothing about justice. Blood, it turns out, must be paid with blood, and nobody, but nobody, thought to put the ferryman's price under his tongue (in a plain white envelope, in the right wrong hands) and so

he went screaming into hell

with the judge's gavel ringing like a thunderbolt in his ears.

The thing about hell is, it's, well -- hell.

And everybody there is dead, only most of them don't know it, and so everybody's yelling and screaming and swearing and fighting and fucking and it ain't, it just ain't like nothing he's ever seen before, though maybe, he talked about it, once or twice, in abstract, at cocktail parties, and maybe he shook his head knowingly but there's knowing

and then there's knowing.

One you can walk away from and the other you pray to God to wake up from.

But you never do.

Not even when they hold you down, face down, and try to force you to believe you aren't dead even as they make you wish you were deader than you are.

Not even when they strip you down to nothing but your insides, and then they dive in and play with those, until you ain't nothing but empty, you ain't nothing but hollow--

--just a shadow, a shade, waiting to pass over--

and the dead in hell go mad slowly because the thing about hell is, it's, well -- hell

and it never ends, it just goes on and on around you,

inside you.

In a way, the emptiness feels good, but it's still empty,

you're still dead,

and this is still hell.

)0(

Now, like the other story, this story doesn't end with the arrival. Stories have always needed a conflict, something that tears your heroine (or hero, or heroin-addict, as the case may be) in two.

The girl, she had a mother at home who missed her so bad, the whole word started dying for lack of her, and our little bitch lawyer has a wife and kids...

pardon me, kids,

'cause the wife did die, though for lack of him is questionable...

and maybe not kids for long, because God and the state, they work in mysterious ways.

But he's still wanting to get back to them,

so he's abstaining

(and she dreamed of dark chariots and he dreamed of blonde braids flying and they both cried in their sleep)

and he's praying

(Lord, hear our prayer, get us the hell out of hell)

but so far, ain't nobody listening,

except, hell has a prince

and it ain't the Aryan fuck with his lightening bolts, whatever that man thinks.

The prince of hell is the one who walks through it, owning it but untouched by it,

is the one who touches him and suddenly he ain't so hollow anymore, and this is still hell but he ain't so alone anymore.

It's a dangerous, dangerous thing,

a forbidden fruit way, way older than apples,

but just as red, just as tempting.

And thus comes our dilemma,

because if he tastes the fruit, if he swallows it down, it'll take seed inside him, it'll becomes a part of him, and it'll own him,

and he will never, ever, get out of hell

even if he leaves.

)0(

The room was humid, maybe a little sour, and thick with the stink of old sweat and soap and hooch. Chris's skin was slick under his fingers, just a bit, enough that his fingers slipped, slid over the cotton, up to the back of his neck and he was lost in

Chris' eyes, their hazy, dark longing

and Chris' mouth, open and sweet and so fucking

hot

over his own

and he was being swallowed alive,

beard burn,
gaslight kiss
aflame with moonshine and desire and need

and hunger, oh god, belly-swallowing hunger,

with Chris' right hand on his waist, his finger sliding into the waistband of his pants, ghosting lightly over the hollow of his hip, stopping just short of his groin and suddenly his body was pushing back, pushing hard, pulling Chris into the emptiness, mainlining him,

his hand gripping the corded strength of Chris' neck, his body pushing into the sudden, overwhelming hardness that made him full to

overflowing.

And then nothing but frost fire burn where Chris' mouth had been...

and sweat in the small of his back, the creases of thigh and groin and the oddest,

earthiest taste in his mouth

sort of like

pomegranates.

He knew he was dead;

and yet, for the first time,

he felt

alive.

END