ruminant
by skazka

ruminant

skazka

Summary

Will dreams. It's complicated.

Notes

(For the prompt "you and your elk", construed expansively to include other ungulates. This fic is set during s1, where the stag of Will's nightmares is still very much a stag-stag and not a dude-stag -- there's some unseemly physical contact, but it's very TV-14.)

Imported from Archive of Our Own. Original work id: 48790624.

Chapter 1

The smell of it is like burning paper, wildfire smoke, benzene. Warm breath on his face, and a deep resonant grumble of sound that rattles Will’s teeth — he can feel the fever-heat of its body as it dabs at the air with a black and shining tongue. Will’s as naked as Cassie Boyle in death, bent backward to receive the stag’s scrutiny — his knees spread, his soft cock adhering to his thigh with all the dignity of a garden snail.

Its head is lowered, smooth black tines spreading out above them. The sound the beast makes is like a junior cellist doing warm-ups on the body of Douglas Wilson — raw and harsh with the shrillness of rending metal. Nothing like that, embedded in dead flesh, should have been capable of sounding a note. A scene from a killer’s dream, and not from reality.

Will reaches up and takes in his hand a fistful of mud-crusted feathers. The black stag’s hide is algae-streaked and muddy, like something dislodged from the primal depths. In rutting season, male elk get haggard — too much energy expended sparring with their rivals and mounting anything that’ll hold still. Will can feel the bones beneath the skin.