Dead Poets' Detective Agency

[new_kate]

Hey hey hey lady_ganesh!!! Do you remember this? I thought about it last week and, because I love you in an utterly ridiculous way, I thought you might enjoy this! Sorry it's not drawn by Higuri You.

Title: Dead Poets' Detective Agency
Fandom: historical RPS (rofl)
Rating: NSFW
Word count: 3K
Many thanks to ghost_guessed for betaing and andmydog for enabling :D
Summary: crack Walt Whitman, Lord Byron, and Oscar Wilde, pulled from the afterlife by an Unknown Force, team up together to fight supernatural crime.




As Oscar descended the stairs he heard words rising up towards him. He sensed the music in them before he could grasp the meaning. The words were flowing together, jumbled still, not yet locked into their final form. The poem was taking shape as he listened, messy and lush, staggering and struggling to be born. 

The moment was intimate, private, but he couldn't help himself. He edged closer, taking it in. The words were sweet and thick as honey, full of fondness and joy, and openly, innocently obscene. Oscar felt himself stirring again at the images the poem was conjuring, but that excitement was superfluous to the larger one.

Walt was writing again. He was writing something new. 

Oscar lingered over the next step, cautiously peeking down into the dimly lit kitchen. He yearned to go inside and listen, and to beg to see the drafts, but he was fearful of making the inspiration flutter away.

He heard the familiar stuttering footsteps behind and didn't move quickly enough to signal a warning. George limped over to the corner with his usual angry stomp and crashed into him, and they both lost their balance and staggered several steps down, grappling for the railing.

Walt wasn't at the table; he sat on the floor by the open coldbox, nude on the wooden floor. There was another naked form sprawled across his lap: a young man, nubile and lovely. Walt's fingers moved across the youth's chest in a reverent caress. Neither of them stirred at the intrusion at first; Walt continued reciting, rounding a stanza, speaking of skin on skin and breaths shared, praising the shape of his lover's lips. The light spilling from the inside of the coldbox painted their bare skin in harsh, bright hues.

The young man's head was resting on Walt's naked thigh, and his eyes were glued to Walt's face, alight with rapt fascination. Walt fell silent, and the boy blinked, coming out of his trance. Only then he glanced up and saw them staring, and flinched, covering himself. 

It was, Oscar realised, their prospective client from this afternoon. The pang of jealousy he felt was two-fold. 

"Oops, sorry 'bout that," the youth muttered, reaching for the tea towel. Walt stilled his hands, gently shaking his head.

"There's no shame in your beauty, and it's certainly nothing my friends hadn't seen before," he said. "Please, let me enjoy you a while longer."

"I didn't realise you were together," the young man told George and Oscar, flushing fetchingly. "Sorry about before, honest mistake."

George offered one of his wordless affronted exclamations, protesting the very idea. His chin was still resting on Oscar's shoulder, which, surely, only added to the confusion.

"I'm not certain the machine is meant to be used this way," Oscar said, trying not to sound bitter. 

"It's sweltering upstairs," Walt said. "We needed to cool down."

"Yes, we should close the fridge," the boy said and didn't move, shivering at the renewed caress.

George thumped Oscar's back impatiently. 

"The wine," he reminded. "Walt, dear chap, we're after some wine."

"I have apple juice," Walt suggested and leaned over his lover's head toward the door of the coldbox. The youth's lips quivered hungrily inches from Walt's bare chest.

"Wine," George insisted. Walt pulled out the paper box and tossed it at them; Oscar ducked, letting George play the fielder and catch it. 

"I'll see you at breakfast," Oscar said pleasantly as George stomped back to his bedroom with the loot. 

Oscar thought not to follow him, but to return to his own room and spend some time alone with his thoughts, nursing his wounded pride. However, the thought of locking himself in his bedroom was as unwelcome as ever. He'd volunteered to take the smallest room when they'd first found themselves in this house. He was - or had once been - the youngest, and these two men were his childhood idols, and such an arrangement would be only right. But the room was tiny, dark on its best day, and too like a cell. Walt had offered to swap with him, his kind heart sensing his friend's discomfort. But Oscar couldn't bring himself to force Walt out of the room that faced the garden. 

Both he and Walt insisted that George should take the largest bedroom, the one with the adjoining bathroom. George had accepted it as his due, the way he accepted every gesture of deference and admiration, and never offered swapping. However, from the memorable second night of their sharing the house, he'd never locked his bedroom door, either. 

It stood ajar now, and Oscar took that as an invitation and pushed it open. George was in bed, his robe gaping perilously; he was struggling with the box, coaxing the wine out.

"We can still buy bottles, you know," Oscar said, not for the first time. "I would much prefer that. This doesn't taste right to me."

"This is the future," George said. "We mustn't cling to the old ways. Pass the glasses, will you?"

They shared the drink, lounging together on the rumpled sheets. 

"By all rights that boy should have been mine," George said. 

The boy should have been Oscar's. He saw him first. It was his turn to speak to the callers who sought to engage their services. As the boy relayed his distressing story: a house, haunted, a friend, changed in awful ways; a bloodthirsty spectre - Oscar only half-listened, feasting his eyes on the open, honest features of their visitor. The boy was a little common, but that only reminded Oscar of Algy's rougher friends. The pangs of longing for that lost life, both the joys and pain of it, were perhaps stronger than the attraction had been. But Oscar wanted this lovely stranger, and the man was accepting, welcoming his advances shyly, laughing at his jokes.

Then, of course, George strutted into the room and had to steal the spotlight, and was succeeding, turning the boy's head with effortless ease. It enraged Oscar, and they'd argued, and that had ended in the same fashion as every argument they'd ever had. George boxed Oscar against the wall in the kitchen and pressed angry kisses to his lips, and whispered a string of filthy, heated words that were insults and challenges and endearments, all at once. And then they were in George's bedroom, Oscar pushing roughly between George's quivering thighs, and next they were wrecked and sated, still angry but too tired to fight any longer.

They'd abandoned their guest in their sitting room, and Walt must have wandered in and made amends for their lack of hospitality. By rights, the boy should have been Walt's.

In the short time since they'd returned to the world Walt had already had a string of lovers. Oscar did his best to respect his friend's privacy and not keep a tally of Walt's conquests, but it couldn't escape his attention that all of them were young, gorgeous creatures, all openly besotted, none bitter that the trysts weren't lasting. Of course, Walt was now a young, gorgeous creature himself. He looked even younger than the first portrait of him Oscar had seen. On that engraving Walt was posed languidly in shirtsleeves, his hat cocked jovially, eyes and lips soft. Oscar was taken with him at once, even before he fell in love with his poems. 

Both he and George wanted to immerse themselves in this new world the way Walt had done so effortlessly. They yearned to taste this bright, unknown future, and enjoy the bodies of these men who were free and unashamed, easy and open with their affections. Yet it was too much to take in, and every night they ended up in this room: tangled together, shaking with lust. They were constantly exasperated with each other and yet clung to their bond, taking comfort in their shared plight and confusion. It had begun as a fight, and it felt like a fight every time, both of them always pushing too hard and too far, marking each other ruthlessly. 

Their situation was too fantastic, too incredible; miraculous as it was, it wasn't easy to take in their stride. Oscar remembered his own death, quite vaguely, through the heavy morphine haze. Next thing he knew was this house, and two familiar faces looking on him in shared confusion. He was healthy; he was young again, and so were both of his companions. He and Walt had recognised each other, and, of course, both of them recognised George, even though they were both utter strangers to him at the time. There was nothing to explain these strange events save for a note they'd found in the sitting room.

The note addressed them by name, beseeching them to take up the task for which they'd been restored to life. It stated that all of them now, having pierced the veil, were uniquely equipped to battle the abominable foes whose very nature was to straddle the boundary between the two worlds. The small venture they were set to inherit had already been well established and its name and address advertised in the right circles. The note had said that the callers would come, and that the three of them were to help them.

The missive wasn't signed, and neither did it state whether accepting their quest was the condition of their borrowed lives or their newly regained youthfulness. George and Walt proclaimed their assent on the spot, without a second thought. They had both been soldiers, each in their own way, and they were instantly ready to march into the new war. Oscar was never like them, and he used to think that life had taught him to pick his battles. But death must have robbed him of that hard-earned prudence, for he couldn't fathom a choice other than following the two of them wherever the path might lead.

Their first encounter with a vampire (for they'd all agreed to never again speak of the first one) had gone a lot more smoothly than might have been expected. The fiend was as abominable as the note had advertised, but certainly not any stranger than any of the things they'd dreamt up in their lifetimes and had written about. George was a competent brawler and Oscar could more than hold his own; neither of them, despite the complexity of their relationships with the Holy Church, had any doubts that the power of Christ would compel the demon to recoil at the crucial moment. Walt's medical expertise ensured that the killing blow was precise and swift.

They'd gone drinking afterwards, and Walt had left quickly with the first man to catch his eye and return his smile. George and Oscar stayed, disapprovingly discussing their friend's lack of discernment; they'd spent hours watching the lively crowd and comparing the merits of denizens of the future, judging them on both personal beauty and their dress sense. By the time they'd narrowed the choices down enough to begin the chase, the public house unexpectedly shut down, long before midnight. They'd been forced out and had to retreat to their headquarters and their stock of wine to continue celebrating their first victory. There had been another vampire since, and a new case involving necromancy, and, oddly, Oscar felt happier than he had in years, glad to be busy and no longer alone.

"Fancy a wager?" George said suddenly. "If you bed Walt before I do, we'll drink bottled wine for a week. Name your forfeit."

"I have an advantage," Oscar pointed out. "I've kissed him already."
"When did that happen?" demanded George, springing up against the pillows, turning blazingly angry in a single heartbeat as was his custom. 

"In 1882. We were contemporaries, George, I thought you'd remember."

George sagged back, all fight gone out of him as quickly as it had flared up. 

"I do envy you," he said quietly. 

George's infatuation with Walt was no more of a secret than Oscar's. It didn't have the same history, of course it couldn't. George had died when Walt was still a child, long before any of Walt's poems were written. But this house had a collection of books, and all their published works were in there, lined neatly on the shelves that looked wooden but weren't. Oscar had read them all during his first lifetime, so he simply marvelled at the volumes. He was a little put off by the changes made to the texts, but overwhelmed to know they were still printed, decade after decade, so long after the words came off his pen onto paper. George began reading Leaves of Grass as soon as they'd concluded their introductions. Since then he'd been fascinated by Walt's works, re-reading and quoting them constantly, driven to distraction by their beauty and power. 

"It didn't lead to much more, he was an old man back then," said Oscar amicably. He didn't think Walt would be that hard to seduce now - the only problem was that he and George kept getting in each other's way and thus neither of them made any progress. "No need to get petulant over one kiss."

"No, not that," George sighed. "This is a lot easier for the two of you. You're closer to this time, and you understand it much better than I do. You were contemporaries; your experience is shared. Half of what the two of you speak about is a mystery to me."

"We're just as baffled as you are. If anything, I'd say you're adjusting faster."

George let out a frustrated grunt and shook his head.

"I'm a relic," he said. "Even compared to the two of you. I don't know why I'm here, and I can't tell yet if there's anything I can truly contribute to this fight. And I've no idea why my works are still here. They're just as hopelessly obsolete as I am. You are immeasurably better."

"You've read me?" 

"Of course," George groaned. "Don't pretend you didn't think I would. It kills me to say it, but you're better. I couldn't have conceived a tenth of your ideas."

"You were my hero when I was a boy," Oscar told him, even knowing he's giving George enough ammunition to be insufferable for months. "All I was - I've learned that from you. You, Walt, and many others."

"Pah!" cried George, trying to conceal how the thought pleased him.

"Shoulders of the giants," Oscar said. "George, I’ve loved you since I learned to read."

It was the honest truth; but right now they both sat in the bed still stained with evidence of their shared pleasure, and those words were laden with new meanings, not quite right for what he'd intended. 

But George, as always, took it all as a king takes his birthright, and pushed him down with an arrogant, gorgeous smile. He was his usual self; he batted at Oscar's hands, cutting short every attempt at artful pleasure, he pulled and shoved and was too impatient and too rough. And then he was straddling Oscar's hips and riding his hard prick, grunting and moaning shamelessly, and he was extraordinary, glorious, godlike; he was himself, just the way Oscar had always imagined he had been.

And as George's seed spurted hotly over Oscar hands and dribbled on his chest, the reality of it crystallised once again in his mind. Every time it was a stunning revelation, as if he'd forgotten who this man was and remembered it all over again the moment they reached ecstasy.

"Dear God, I'm fucking Lord Byron," Oscar muttered helplessly, too far gone to censor himself. George laughed and sunk down to claim his lips, oddly gentle for one short-lived moment. 

"Tomorrow I shall let you read my newest," he whispered against Oscar's skin.

"You're writing again?" Oscar gasped, elated by the news.

"Of course I am. And so should you. It's the only way for men like us to keep our sanity. We must write, we must let it all out. Promise me you shall. I've run out of you to read."

Oscar didn't promise, still unsure if he wanted to write again: the joy of it seemed to be dead to him, and he saw little point in trying. He turned onto his side and busied himself fixing a few curlers that had come haphazardly loose in George's hair during their tumble. 

For the first few days of their new lives George had still been using paper curlers which he fashioned from newspapers, but now, in his determination to move with the times, he'd purchased a set of modern day ones. They were odd to the touch: flexible, spongy and solid at once, geranium pink in colour; George claimed them to be a great improvement. He let Oscar twist his stray locks into place and said with an air of contemplation:

"I have recently learned that among their other achievements our descendants have developed a scientific treatment that would set the curls permanently."

"How perfectly delightful," Oscar said. "The true genius of the generation can only be seen in their readiness to expend themselves on utterly useless tasks. I like them ever more with each day. Are you planning to undergo that treatment?"

"I'm still considering it. When faced with immortality, one has to revisit one's concept of permanence."

"What makes you believe we're immortal?"

"What makes you doubt that idea?"

"Something must have happened to our predecessors," Oscar pointed out. 

"Don't be such a dreadful bore, Wilde," George huffed, and proceeded to pour out more wine.

He drifted off after that, lost in his thoughts, perhaps conjuring another poem in his mind. Oscar envied him a little, for his own mind had been idle for a while now, and he didn't have an imaginary world do withdraw into, no warm cocoon of words of his own. He'd been kept busy by their current investigation, but now that had come to an end. The target had been found, the plans have been laid; the time for plotting was over, and now the hour of battle was drawing near. Tomorrow they would raid a nest of ghouls and face the conjurer, and put an end to that matter one way or another.

Oscar knew that his companions were looking forward to it. George craved the fight; he wished to expend himself and to bleed out some of that fire that was ever-burning in his veins. Walt had been elated by the possibility of righting a wrong, and Oscar -

To his considerable surprise, Oscar found himself rather excited about tomorrow. The plan of attack was all his doing, and it was devilishly clever, even if he said so himself. He'd toiled over the strategy, agonised over every move, and now, at last, the stage was set and ready, and the playwright in him could scarcely wait to see with his own eyes how his vision would unfold, and how each scene would play out.


end