Batman Appreciation Post #11

Thick Thighs

Batman Master Collection

Bleed into my open mouth will you, won't you?

Summary: Simon Riley never learned to let go. He lets the pain follow him, swallow him, devour him whole.

For once, he wants to be the one who consumes.

Warnings: Dead dove do not eat, cannibalism, blood and gore, whump, hurt no comfort, 18+.

A/N: Vague ghoap thing. Not sure what it is actually blacked out wrote it stared at it in horror then proceeded to post it anyways.

“Used to be a butcher, y’know.” Simon breathes into the open air, dragging the cigarette to his lips with an unsteady hand. “When I left school. Smelled like shit, but taught me to be good with knives before I knew I’d need to be.”

The block has been pulled from the wall, torn down and leaving a gaping hole in it’s emptiness. His knives are scattered across the counter, unorganised and glinting in the clinical white light that swings above them. It creaks. He’d tear it down if he didn’t need it.

He’s reminded that he doesn’t need it; that he could close his eyes and bring the cleaver right down where he needs it to be and it would cut clean. He was always good at that bit. Heavy-handed enough so that he never had to sit and hack away at the meat. Not like the other lads. Better. He had a natural affinity for it.

For hacking and sawing and tearing and skinning. For bleeding dry and hooking and hoisting up over his shoulder until his arms burned.

“Wasn’t bad pay either, for a youngin.” He adds. “Got me by. ‘Till I joined up.”

He stubs the cigarette out on the table, pushing it down until the ash whispers out around it and the butt crumples up beneath his fingers. He brushes it away but it leaves a sear stain on the wood.

“Shouldn’t have brought you here, Johnny.” He admits. “Don’t know why I did.”

That’s a lie, and he grimaces at how badly it’s told. Something in him nags, like he should at least do his Sergeant the dignity of seeing the deceit through. Playing it up, they both know he knows how. He hasn’t made it as far as he has without being a liar.

He’s been lying all day.

Lying to the Captain was the hardest. Not because of any difficulty in doing it, lying came to him easier than breathing did these days. It was knowing the Captain knew he was lying, and knowing he didn’t do anything to stop him.

God, Simon wanted to say something. He wanted to be stopped. He wanted to be kicked in the teeth and to bleed his own blood into his mouth. Be his own victim for a change. But he didn’t want it enough. Couldn’t help himself, and then again…he never really could.

He could never keep up with his mouth, eyes too slow to catch what he was doing, brain whirring on and on beyond and before what he could trap between his teeth.

“But, you’re here now.” Simon whispers, but the words echo anyways; bouncing off of the checkerboard tiles plastered on the wall. “And I can’t take you back.”

He blindly skims the counter, hand dusting across until the thick of the blade presses a papercut into his thumb. Then, he closes his fist around the handle. Knuckles click, chains rattle as he ambles around the room.

It’s an art. A dirty art.

But Johnny is beautiful. Johnny is clean. The morgue did a good job; painted the warmth back into his skin, the redness back into his lips so it looks like the blood’s still flowing. Simon leans over, thumbs the cold, cracking skin there and smears the lipstick away. Rubs until it comes off on his own skin, and there’s only pale white death left on Johnny’s mouth.

He streaks a line of it across his own. It smells chemical, dries too quick on his skin.

The light creaks again.

Simon clatters his free fist against it, drawing back and back again until the strip hangs lopsided and flickers out of life. The darkness swallows him whole, buries the room in it. His eyes adjust quick, enough to see the outline of Johnny’s bicep- where it attaches to the shoulder.

It’s art.

The moment he brings the cleaver down, it’s art. When the blade lodges into the table and he doesn’t bother to yank it out, it’s art. He cradles the cut in his hand, softly dislodges it from any stringing cartilage attaching it to the shoulder and runs his fingers over the separation, buries into the now loose muscle, the blood bubbling up around his nail beds and burrowing beneath the overhang.

It’s art. It’s art. It’s art. It’s beauty, it’s creation not desecration.

The ashes wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to share them, split them. Halve and quarter them and quarter them again until he gets maybe an eighth. Simon can’t bear to lose a morsel of him.

A scribbled recipe sits untouched by the oven. Simon’s eye catches the crinkle of the paper, the yellowing sheet crumpled and then smoothed out over the countertop.

He can’t keep up with his mouth.

His teeth vanish into the cut of flesh, incisors cracking against canines, molars clinging to what meat they can find. It’s acrid in his mouth, his tongue swims in the blood that floods there. He pulls too hard, the arm almost slipping out of his grasp as he yanks his head back in some failed cinematic replica of how he’s seen the consumption go in films.

It doesn’t go down easy, fights every inch of his mouth and gullet as he rips it apart with his teeth and sits the chunks on his tongue. He’d laugh if it meant he wouldn’t choke. It’s just like Johnny, to make things so difficult.

He almost pukes the first mouthful up, has to tenderly set the arm down and grip the table with one hand, barricading over his mouth with the other until the nausea in his stomach settles. Until Johnny settles.

Simon sucks the blood from his teeth, wipes it down with his tongue, content to make it go down with his own saliva out of fear that water might dampen the taste. He’s so used to death that he can’t distinguish the smell of it, but the taste is fresh. Only ever been had second-hand, when too much blood seeps out of the bodies he leaves behind him and taints the air with its decay.

He won’t taste it ever again. Not like this, not this whole, not this fresh. Not if it’s not Johnny.

He could’ve left anyone else at the morgue. Quite happily, he could have visited the body and said his goodbyes and walked away and been okay.

No one else fills him with the desire to have and be had like Johnny does.

Looming over the corpse, Simon sighs. He presses a bloody hand to the outline of Johnny’s face, tugs the man’s lips ajar. Sobs into his open mouth. Spits the blood back in, heaves and crushes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to see. Clumsily travels his fingers down the arm that’s still attached, interlocks their fingers together. He has to curl Johnny’s into his manually. Stiff bone by stiff bone, until they sit, lax, in his own.

His head wants to apologise, to sew the remaining arm back on and zip Johnny back up in the bag. Put his tux back on and drive him back to the morgue before morning light, take his eighth of the ashes and pour them into a vial he can keep in his jacket pocket.

Shaking and swallowing back salt and iron, Simon peels himself away from Johnny. He fixes the man's fingers back into place, before rounding the table and jiggling the cleaver out of the wood.

The cut of arm feels less heavy, and it’s jagged around the top where the bone peeks out above the mountain of flesh. Simon turns, fumbles for his phone and clicks the flashlight on- angling it at the floor as he drags his feet along the tiles and trudges to the freezer door.

He doesn’t bother with a coat, but winces at the way the cold nips and tugs at his skin. An array of hooks decorate from wall to wall, hanging from ceiling to floor. He presses his thumb into Johnny’s arm, before sinking the meat into a hook- watching the sharp point pierce up through the skin, the tiny squirt of blood that follows it.

A weak apology mumbles it’s way out of his mouth. The bite mark, the chunk missing, makes the meat look ugly. He squeezes a hand around a cold finger, before stepping out and slamming the door behind him.

He squints, and the cleaver glints on the wooden carving desk.

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babybatreads

8 months ago

ghoap au where soulmates share pain. ghost with chronic pain who takes care of himself enough to stay alive vs soap who’s got spread sheets and slide shows on pain management and pacing for the day he finds his soulmate.

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