Cannot say that word

Notes: The internet is so very lacking in fanfiction for this wonderful book. I attribute this to the fact that it's a classic, and you either hate it or don't want to blasphemy against it. Also, people seem to read it for school. I lament and rejoice that my school never assigned it to me. Doing something because you're told to takes all the enjoyment out of it. Actually, it's most likely I've never read it for school because I'm too young…

Some of the lines are copied from the book.

Ah, the title refers to a word all over this book that nevertheless never seemed to be where I expected it…or wanted it, whatever. Wilde made me read absolutely everything he has ever published, just to see if he ever says anything outright. He does, once, but it's a bird (A swallow) and a statue of a prince, so does that even count?

Warnings: Tragedy. History always ends the same way, with the present. And, you know, 20/20 hindsight makes it all the sadder. Also, ambiguities that could be taken risqué ways. Slash.

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Basil Hallward sat in Dorian's house, his head in his hands. Every line of his body stood out, sharp and angular, resisting what he had seen. His hands knot in the hair hanging around his face. He can't look at Dorian but he sees him anyway. Dorian looks at nothing.

"Good God, Dorian, what a lesson! What an awful lesson!" He thought he heard Dorian crying. He did not answer.

He could see nothing but Dorian, his Dorian, his ideal, his worship. His eyes stayed on the table. Without looking up, without blurring old memories, he pleaded. Begged.

Guilt choked his words. His worship had corrupted, it was dirt and soot and a stain to both their names but he could not let go, not as many times as he tried.

Finally Dorian turned from the window. Basil heard his footsteps to the table and did not raise his head.

"It is too late, Basil," he murmured, an odd tone coloring his words.

Basil mutely shook his head, tears blurring the dark table.

He felt a cool hand slide beneath his chin and tip his face up. Dorian needed no force but his touch. Basil had to look at him, had to rise, to meet his arctic gaze. Dorian's eyes were quite dry.

Transfixed, as a bird before a serpent. He could never fly again, not from his blue eyes.

Dorian puts his scaly coils around him with a simple touch on the arm, pulls the living noose tight with fingers running through his hair.

He kills with a kiss. Basil shivers, shakes, moans, and touches Dorian for the first time in his life, pulls him closer. He's terribly gentle in some way that makes Basil want more.

Basil can't breathe quite right even when Dorian's mouth is gone. Arcs of electricity are running across his skin and playing on his lips, from whenever Dorian touches him. He's holding on for dear life, but of course nothing is quite right.

This is when Dorian sees the portrait. This is when Dorian remembers just what he's done, just what he's become.

This is when Basil sees Dorian's face and it's just another shock with all the little ones, and he can't tell the heaven of his touch from the hell of his soul. He only wants deeper into whatever he has.

This is when Dorian kisses Basil, panicky and pleading, and for a moment he is like a child again. And Basil kisses him back, lost in sensation and altogether gone from altruism, and doesn't comfort him or stroke his back or touch his cheek, he just drowns in it and lets his hands wander with instinct, because he has barely ever kissed anyone before and Dorian; Dorian, Dorian, Dorian, his Dorian, his worship is here and touching him and his lips and Basil is lost to anything but that.

Dorian is saying what he wouldn't in words, Save me, and now Basil can't hear. Now it's Basil pressing against him, it's Basil's adoration he's reveling in, and Basil's hands doing things so far disconnected with purity that Dorian is crying, and Basil doesn't even notice, lust makes him selfish when he's kissing an ideal, an idol, his worship.

Basil makes him remember what he's done, how far he's gone, the things he has done to people and made people do, when they were unwilling but afraid or desperate or just enthralled. Basil makes him remember how far people fall, how deep regrets can run and how he hasn't got any. Basil was the purest person he knew, and that was what he was begging for, but now he cannot reconcile these images and sensations.

Dorian clings to the very thing hurting him, driving shards of ice deeper into his heart, and tries one sweet soft kiss but Basil moans, that sound, to remind him of everyone he had loved, what he had done to them, how he killed her, how he corrupted it all.

It's a small sound but it's just what drives Dorian's grip around the dagger behind him, why Dorian flies into motion, slamming him down against the table, why it only takes one motion and not even as much thought to let the dagger find his neck, to stab, again and again with blood on his hands.

This is when everything is very very still, when Dorian goes through the motions, cool and calculated, and lays his deceits without a waver of emotion or tone.

This is when it is late at night and quiet like that room, and there's no-one with him tonight.

This is when Dorian Gray cries.

((The word, which I have decided I will not say either, is always applied to heterosexual pairings but never where it actually belongs. It seems to me that the women always adore some mask, some ideal, without real romance. Like they paste some face to their men and only see that. (I guess pretty much what Basil does in this story.) The men always seem to take affection like a journey to somewhere entirely mundane, a simple commute, and they too see masks. The only difference, I suppose, is that in Wilde's stories you can see that they're masks. It just all seems very cold to me. People never care about people, just what they want them to be. And when you believe everything you read, that does indeed corrupt, even if it's all true. Insanity is just a lack of insulation.

Maybe there's something different in Basil and Dorian, in the Swallow and the Happy Prince. Not that it seems that I could write Basil like that anyway. Maybe I will try again.))