Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/871961.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      30_Seconds_to_Mars
  Relationship:
      Jared_Leto/Shannon_Leto
  Character:
      Jared_Leto, Shannon_Leto, Their_father
  Additional Tags:
      Murder, Death, Gore, Cannibalism, Necrophilia, Incest, Pedophilia,
      Kidnapping, blood_letting, Drug_Use
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-06 Words: 2031
****** Till Death Do Us Part ******
by ShinSolo
Summary
     I knew how to kill. I understood the rush that came with the kill. I
     was aware of the addiction and the need to kill that often followed.
     I just never in my wildest dreams expected my first time to be with
     him.
Notes
     Prompt: Fit as many warnings into one fic as you can. Must include
     cannibalism.
See the end of the work for more notes

I was seventeen years old when I first took another man’s life. He was
nineteen. Of course, by that time I had already grown accustom to bloodshed and
death. I learned how to take a life in the same manor that an infant learns to
smile – by watching my parents.

I knew how to kill. I understood the rush that came with the kill. I was aware
of the addiction and the need to kill that often followed. I just never in my
wildest dreams expected my first time to be with him.

My father came from a long line of criminals, each generation just as cutthroat
as the one before it. And my mother was non-other-than the daughter of the
infamous Ray Fernandez, who – with the aid of a female assistant – was
responsible for the deaths of more than twelve women back in the ‘40's.

It was just natural for Shannon and me to follow the family tradition. In fact,
it was expected of us.

There was never a time in my life in which I did not know what was going on
around me. As a toddler, I was often left to play on the blood drenched cement
floor with Shannon while my father molded bits and pieces of his victims into
intricate sculptures of decaying flesh – sculptures that would then be
displayed in various parts of the house until they decomposed to such an extent
that they lost their shape.

At the dinner table, my parents would openly discuss various methods in which
human meat could easily be removed from the bone, and about whether it was
better to use olive oil or butter when cooking. My father almost always
suggested the use of garlic. Shannon and I learned earlier on that it was best
not to ask what we were eating, because nineteen times out of twenty, we
received a truthful answer.

Then, when I was either eight or nine, I walked in on my father bent over the
corpse of what had been a boy only barely older than Shannon. I watched – my
eyes glued to the scene in front of me – as my father groaned, his dick making
a wet suction sound as he pushed in and out of the dead boy’s anal cavity. The
corpse had been decayed to such an extent that a dark unknown fluid poured out
of its mouth with every thrust.

When my father noticed me, he grinned, his eyes narrowing.

“Come here,” he had said, his voice thick with lust. “I’m going to teach you
something.”

And before I even realized what was going on, my lips had closed over his dick,
the sour taste of decay filling my mouth and dribbling down my chin.

His hand tangled in my hair. The putrid fluids that covered the floor soaked
through the knees of my jeans. And when he came, I swallowed every drop without
even having to have been told.

He patted the back of my head and pulled me to my feet.

“You’re a good son,” he told me as he wiped a smear of cold, congealed blood
from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “A goddamn good son.”

I would later learn that my father averaged two kills a year, and each one was
always meticulously planned. He would befriend them on the internet. Draw them
to him. Gain their trust. Convince them to meet him.

Most of them were barely old enough to be considered teenagers. They were the
runaways, the dreamers, the hopeless, the outcasts, the unwanted.

They were his toys, and his indulgences.

He would drug them, tie them to the table in his ‘studio’ room in the basement,
and – with the aid of a standard razor blade and a surgical scalpel – trace
over all of their prominent features, each incision deeper than the first,
until their bodies were slick with blood and their pulses weakened. When they
screamed, he simply gave them more drugs. And while he waited for them to bleed
to death, his eyes never broke contact with theirs.

As the years went by, I began to sit-in on more and more of my father’s
‘sessions,’ but Shannon slowly retreated and started spending more and more of
his time alone in his room. He took shelter in books and music, not knives and
screams.

He craved passion, but not destruction.

And many nights I found him between my sheets, our thighs slick with sweat, our
breathing synchronized, our seed flowing together as white teeth pierced pale
flesh.

“We’re gonna rule the world one day,” I whispered the night before, his head
laying on my shoulder, my arms around his waist.

“What if I don’t want to rule the world, Jay?” He said softly, his lips
ghosting over my skin.

“Then we’ll just have to figure that out when we get there.” – I smiled and
kissed him on the top of the head. – “Now go to sleep, Shay. Dad says we’ve got
a big day tomorrow. An’ you need your beauty sleep.”

That was the last time I ever heard his laugh, ever felt his lips against mine,
his hands sliding across my body.

When I awoke, the bed was cold. I was hogging the covers, but no one was
complaining. Everything was too quiet.

“Shay?” I muttered, reaching across the bed, my hand coming up empty. “Where
are you?”

“He’s already waiting on you, Son.”

I jerked awake at the sound of my father’s voice in the room, but before I
could reply, he was already gone.

When I stepped into the cold studio that day, I was met with the strong smell
of Isopropyl Alcohol. Every single surface of the room had been sterilized. The
stainless steel autopsy table had been wiped down and polished. Years of caked
on blood had been scraped off of the cement floor. The cardboard and dark
plastic that had covered the basement’s only window for as long as I could
remember, had been taken down, the window polished so that the sunlight could
pour into the room.

And for a moment, the site of it made me wonder if the past seventeen years of
my life had just been a figment of my imagination – but only for a moment.

“Nice of you to join us,” my father said without even looking up from the sink.
He was sanitizing scalpel after scalpel, razor blade after razor blade. They
were his art supplies, his potter’s wheel and his paintbrushes. The human body
was his clay and his canvas.

Everything had been cleared out of the center of the studio except for various
trays of my father’s art supplies. Everything that my father valued that could
easily be broken, had been moved into another room. A love seat had been moved
into the studio from the living room and placed against one of the far walls.
Shannon leaned against one of the brick walls, watching me.

“When a king falls, who takes his place on the throne?”my father asked once he
had turned off the sink and dried his hands.

“His heir,” I replied as Shannon’s hand found mine, our fingers entwining.

“But what if a king has two sons? Can they both be king?”

“Then it’s usually the older son,” I said, glancing at Shannon. “The older son
usually takes over, unless – of course – he isn’t healthy or fit, or doesn’t
want it. Then it goes to the younger son.”

“Usually, yes,” he said, his eyes expressionless as he looked back and forth
between Shannon and me. “But what if the king does not know which of his sons
are best suited to take his place? What if the oldest of his sons is stronger
and smarter that the other, but lacks the fire and ambition of the youngest?
Then how does he decide?”

Shannon’s hand gripped mine tighter. Neither of us dared to even breathe, let
alone answer him.

“You don’t know?” He questioned, his lips drawn up in a snide smile. “He turns
son against son, brother against brother. He leaves it up to them, and the last
one left breathing, wins.”

I jerked my hand away from Shannon’s, my eyes wide. In less than a second my
father had turned Shannon – my brother, best friend, the only lover I had ever
known – into a threat, an enemy, an obstacle.

Shannon was scared to death, but so was I. My hands were shaking. I felt like I
could not breathe.

“Jared . . .” Shannon breathed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “No .
. .”

But we both knew that we had no choice but to do as our father asked. If we
objected, if we refused, if we just stood there crying and clinging to one
another, we would suffer far greater at the hand of our father than we would at
our own. At least this way, we would have the decency to make the other’s death
as quick and as painless as we could. At least this way, the victor could free
the other from the hands of his father, from the cold autopsy table, from the
scalpels and screams.

This way, we had a chance to make the other’s death mean something.

There was a blur of movement, a scream, and then our lives came crashing apart.
I thought I had been the one to make the first move, but later on when my
father described the incident, he claimed we acted at the exact same moment –
one out of love, the other out of fear.

He struggled and managed to break free of my grasp for a moment, only to fall
backwards into one of the medical assistant trays when my fist collided with
the side of his face. That was also the moment I knew that he was not going to
fight back, that he did not have the willpower to bring himself to hurt me.

I went down with him, sitting astride his chest, my knees pressing against his
sides. The sheer excitement and raw intimacy of the situation had affected my
body in ways that I had never dreamed. And when the storage shelves were pulled
down on top of the two of us, I could not help but moan out loud.

Blindly I reached for the nearest object, something I could make into my own
potter’s wheel, my own paintbrush, but my eyes never left Shannon’s.

“Jared, don’t do this . . . please don’t kill me . . . I love you . . .”

He said other things after that – I know he did – but my mind was no longer
functioning like a normal person’s would. I was no longer in control of my
actions. I was no longer Jared, and the life I held between my hands was no
longer my brother. I was the predator, he was the prey.

Finally, my finger brushed against something plastic and I pulled it to me. My
father had often told me that a true artist could make anything into art, that
a true artist could turn anything into his tool, his paintbrush. The trick lay
in figuring out how to wield what you are given.

The object I had grabbed was one of those clear garbage bags designed for
bathroom and office trash cans, the kind that were often scented with vanilla
or sometimes lemon. This particular one happened to be lavender, the flower
that promoted sleep and relaxation. It suited Shannon.

I stretched the clear plastic over his face and pressed down hard on the edges.
My lips pressed against his through the plastic, but he could not have kissed
back even if he had wanted.

He pushed against me, his feet kicking, his fingernails tearing at the skin of
my arms, but I never once broke eye contact with him. His eyes were wide with
fear, but mine were slightly narrowed, full of nothing but love for my brother
and lust for the kill.

But when his eyes lost focus, and he stopped struggling, I began to tremble. A
single tear slid down my face and splattered onto the plastic.

I had just killed my own brother, but my father was applauding.
End Notes
     I have the beginning of a sequel already written for this one. Maybe
     one day I'll get around to finishing it.
     Written 02/27/2007.
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